Option four: a compromise on gay marriage

Nor can this approach neatly solve every question of benefits. The approach advocated here does not attempt to settle questions about rights and duties involving children, where the divisions make attempts at compromise unpromising. Finally, how to apply the approach raises some difficult questions. Tax and Social Security law interact with marriage in various ways. The relevant provisions of the law could be seen as acknowledgments of marriage's dimension as an economic partnership--in which case legislators could presumably extend the benefits to non-marital households that function as economic partnerships. If the provisions are seen, however, as a way for the government to encourage moral behavior, social conservatives and social liberals are likely to disagree about whether they should apply to same-sex couples.

A compromise need not settle all the issues, however, to offer something to each side.

Advocates of gay marriage would not get legal recognition for gay relationships. Their cause might lose some steam, since gays would get some benefits whose denial had previously generated sympathy. But gays would get those benefits sooner than they would if they wait for victory in the struggle for gay marriage--and those real-world benefits have to count for something. If advocates of gay marriage are right that their triumph is historically inevitable, they have little to lose.

Opponents of same-sex marriage also have little to lose, and something to gain. Many of them insist that they are not motivated by any hostility to gays as people. Supporting an extension of benefits would allow them to prove it, which would be worthwhile morally and would also improve their tactical position in the political debate. Their chances of passing the constitutional amendment they seek might improve. (It's important that there's no certainty here. If this compromise were certain to make the social conservatives succeed, the other side would have no reason to support it.)

And it's just barely possible that everyone would reap the benefit of a reduction in the strife that has attended the marriage debate. **

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