Gay Marriage is Dead... Long Live Gay Marriage

The Republican Coup in the New York Senate has killed hopes for gay marriage legislation anytime soon.  While one certainly cannot credit pressure by gay marriage opponents for the absolutely unprecedented coup, one cannot discount it either.  Coupled with Proposition 8 being upheld by the liberal California Supreme Court, and no support whatsoever coming from the White House, and it is clear that the gay marriage movement in its current form is basically dead.

The centrist view of gay rights seems to be to maximize gay rights up to the point of interfering with traditional customs such as marriage, which people feel to be important.  Nobody thinks that denying a same-sex partner hospital visitation rights makes any sense.  At the same time, the claims of the same-sex marriage movement-- that there is nothing special, unique, or important about motherhood, fatherhood, or long-term heterosexual commitments-- have not gained any traction whatsoever and have been a huge source of energy for the opposition.

The legal danger to the anti-gay marriage forces has always been that any compromise would be taken by the courts as evidence of (unwarranted) discrimination-- if you're granting civil unions to gays, then marriage can't mean very much, thus not giving them marriage is violation of equal rights.  But as long as the gay marriage proponents do not pursue this legal strategy, then we have a groundwork for compromise.   The compromise will take different forms, but will mostly be in the form of exhanced civil unions.