This has long been the pattern – Christianists so hostile to gay people that they’d rather destroy the institution of civil marriage for all than allow gay couples into it. A Michigan reader notes:
Ok, Andrew – I’ve found beautiful proof of your thesis: the more restrictive states are in passing ant-gay marriage amendments, the faster this actually undermines traditional marriage for heterosexuals.
Take Michigan, for example, which has one of the most restrictive anti-gay marriage amendments. The Michigan attorney general recently ruled that state universities and government institutions had to stop offering insurance benefits to gay domestic partners, since that would "recognize a relationship equivalent to marriage."
So what has Michigan State University done in response? They have re-written their insurance policy to offer insurance to anyone who lives with a state employee who is neither "a tenant or a legal dependent":
"As it happens, the new Michigan State program has at least one positive side effect, at least from the employees’ view: it would potentially expand eligibility to more people than under its previous domestic partnership plan. Unmarried heterosexual couples who met the criteria, for example, could now take advantage of the benefits."
The attorney general approves of Michigan State rewriting its partner benefits this way, since it avoids the issue of the partner’s sexual orientation. Thus, the only way state governments have of responding to conservative attacks on the right of gay people to partake of marriage benefits is to provide insentives to further dilute heterosexual marriage, so that they can continue to offer the same benefits to all. In the name of "protecting marriage" these people are in fact speeding its dismantlement.
I made this point in 1989. I wish they’d listened.
The Dish 