GETTING TO THE CRUX OF GAY MARRIAGE: From the Oregonian

...The message underlined something that the leadership of the ACLU, treating gay marriage as a main theme of the meeting, already knew: It's tough to win a debate about gay marriage. It's a different conversation when it's about people.

In resisting gay marriage, says Matt Coles, director of the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, "people aren't worried that their kids will be gay. They're worried that basic values are collapsing, and that's what pulls them negative. What pulls them positive is, people really don't think it's fair to treat people differently."

Especially when they can see gay people working to build the same kinds of lives and commitments other people are trying to manage.

Mayor Gavin Newsom told the crowd about his first municipal marrying: "This was a couple entitled to all the rights, privileges and obligations my wife and I got when we got married three years ago."

After 50 years, you'd think a couple should be entitled to anything. It's a theme likely to be vital in all the states -- notably Oregon, the highest-profile battle in the country -- voting on anti-gay marriage initiatives this fall. ...

About a third of Americans, Coles says, oppose any legal recognition of gay relationships. Another third -- actually, he corrects himself carefully, more like 30 percent -- support same-sex marriage. ...

Which may be why, at the conference's information desk devoted to same-sex marriage, you can get a sticker that reads, "Grandparents for Fairness." It's a sticker that combines two phrases that test very positive.

"If you talk about allowing same-sex marriage, people think you're asking for their approval, and they don't want to give that," Coles says. "If you talk about exclusion, they come around. The key concept is commitment, and showing that people suffer consequences." And most Americans will be against that. Maybe not, Coles admits, this November or next, but they will be.

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