Tuesday, March 30, 2004

One Step at a Time: The art of compromise is to make sure that neither side is happy with the results. That seems to what happened when the Massachusetts Legislature gave initial approval for a state constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage but would allow for civil unions.

Conservatives are happy to slap down what they see as a runaway state supreme court that, they say, invented the legal right for homosexuals to marry. The left has helped ensure civil rights for a group that faces blatant discrimination in the law. But neither side wanted to give up anything.

The result is not total marriage for gays, but homosexual couples will receive many of the same legal benefits that heterosexual married couples receive. The difference is semantics, and there's no reason to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

But creating a right to civil unions in the Massachusetts Constitution is a step in the right direction. The state constitution can more easily be updated later to allow gays to marry than, say, the U.S. Constitution.

And this compromise also shows that President Bush's endorsement of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage is not only unnecessary, but is also a drastic overreaction. The states can handle this issue. Let them slowly pave the way toward granting civil rights for homosexuals, then the federal government can learn to follow along.