A Real Threat To Marriage

This would be a huge mistake:

I hope advocates don’t make other, more radical claims.  I’ve heard people talking about arguing that Prop. 8, when combined with either the suspect class status of sexual orientation or the fundamental nature of the marriage right, requires that civil marriage be rescinded entirely, with presumably only a  non-discriminatory civil union status remaining.  The technical merits of the claim aside, I can’t imagine a judge accepting it.  More importantly, that argument strikes me as a public relations catastrophe: after arguing for months about the importance of marriage it would be seen as a scorched earth policy of denying the right to everyone rather than continuing the hard work of obtaining the right for ourselves.  I can’t imagine lawyers pressing this argument, and I hope they don’t.

My advice to the marriage movement: educate, speak, reach out. Stop the litigating. Resist the impulse to revel in victimhood. It may be justified and I certainly know how it feels, but it doesn’t change any minds. That’s what we have to re-focus on. And that’s the only reason we have had the success we have had. Patience, diligence, charity: these are what a civil rights movement needs to stand for.