SAYING NO TO "I DO": Jonathan Rauch
...When people ask how I feel about the election, I tell them that this must be what it's like to be worked over in a dark alley by a couple of loan sharks. Gay couples and their children (more than a fourth of households headed by same-sex couples have kids, according to the 2000 census) need the legal protections and the caregiving tools--not, mostly, "benefits"--that marriage uniquely provides. Gay individuals, coupled or not, need the prospect of marriage, with its sustaining promise of a destination for love and of a stable home in a welcoming community. In 13 states the dream of marriage has, for gay Americans, receded far over the horizon. ...
The consensus has shifted rapidly, meanwhile, toward civil unions. The 2004 exit polls showed 35% of voters supporting them (and another 25% for same-sex marriage). Particularly after the Nov. 2 debacle, civil unions look to many gay-rights advocates like the more attainable goal. It is not lost on them that Vermont's civil-unions law and California's partnership program have proved surprisingly uncontroversial. For their part, social conservatives increasingly, if grudgingly, accept civil unions as deflecting what they regard as an attack on marriage. John Kerry endorsed civil unions, and in October Mr. Bush accepted them, saying, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do."
...Republicans' continued control of Supreme Court nominations makes it nearly unimaginable--and it was always unlikely--that the court will overrule the states on gay marriage. The Supreme Court recently sidestepped an opportunity to intervene in Massachusetts' gay marriages, and the election returns will give lower federal courts second thoughts about butting in. The enactment of those 13 state amendments demonstrates that popular sovereignty is alive and well in the states. I am dismayed by the amendments' passage, but I can't complain about the process. Nov. 2 showed that our federalist system is working exactly as it should, and it made the case for federal intervention weaker than ever.
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