I’m watching the coverage of the gay marriage debate and I keep thinking to myself that none of the press articles truly explain why the marriage vs. civil union difference is important. I guess the more I think about this, the more I believe that allowing gays to marry is the right thing (not that I ever thought we should legislate against it). The inimitable Atrios posted a concise list of rights confered by marriage compiled by Nolo.com (original marriage rights list). In addition, he links to a MarriageEquality.com page that contains a 1999 GAO Report which found 1,049 benefits of marriage in the U.S. code.

Some of the more interesting ones:

• Making medical decisions for your spouse if he or she becomes incapacitated and unable to express wishes for treatment.
• Claiming the marital communications privilege, which means a court can’t force you to disclose the contents of confidential communications between you and your spouse during your marriage.
• Obtaining domestic violence protection orders.
• Obtaining immigration and residency benefits for noncitizen spouse.
• Visiting rights in jails and other places where visitors are restricted to immediate family.

Then again, I can’t help think back to the fact that 50 years ago in this same country in many states and counties for similar arbitrary, moralistic reasons, Heidi and I couldn’t date or get married. Or Karen and Victor. Or my high school buddy Dave and his fiance Trish (he’s a Jew, she’s not). Or my cousin Alex and his wife (she’s Irish).

Update: Hmm, I should probably go to bed (it’s 4:22 AM). Well, I just watched the rebroadcast of Larry King Live and I have to say I’m very, very impressed with the Mayor of San Francisco. He clearly has thought this issue through. He easily fielded every question asked of him from callers in places like North Carolina and Georgia trying to challenge him. I especially loved his answer to the “what authority do you have to decide what counts as discrimination.” He politely reminded the caller that he was an elected official in the executive branch who took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the state as well as the laws of San Francisco.

Another interesting thing I’ve noted. Musgrave (the misguided rep from Colorado who is sponsoring the FMA amendment) is pretty feeble on this issue. Her main argument was that Mayor Newsom went outside the deliberative legislative process (see his response above to see why she’s wrong about that). Then her trump card seemed to be that gay marriage will open the door to poligamy and group marriages and dogs and cats sleeping together and men and sheep marrying (ok, she didn’t really say the last two, but she clearly was leading to that imagery).

My response to that is does she think we’re all idiots?? Seriously? I mean, we draw limits in society all the time. Discrimination laws talk about discriminating against a person because of something about the individual. How does a group marriage (her favorite example of degenerate morality coming from gay marriage) even relate to discrimination against an individual?

Look, we say the constitution allows individuals to own firearms but we regularly draw limits on what kind of firearms one can own and how you can purchase one. Just because we affirm the right for you to own a weapon doesn’t mean you can go out and buy a rocket launcher or gatling gun without dealing with extra laws. Nor can you go out and buy a tank or a fighter jet. We limit by the nature of our laws.

I’m still leaning toward my original position, however. Noah Feldman was on Lou Dobbs tonight (I’m watching that rebroadcast now) and put it very succinctly. Just remove marriage from the purview of the state (as in government, not state as in Georgia). The state will only issue Civil Union licenses bestowing special rights onto one life partner for everyone. Churches and religions can decide what is marriage. While I believe gays should be allowed to marry, the nature of having this debate in government strikes me as wrong. Issues that are purely moral and not dealing with harm to other citizens shouldn’t really be regulated by the state.

oh, and this is funny.