A Third Way For Partnerships?

FACEBOOK FEEDBACKLots of readers commented on coverage of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision. Here is a small sample:Nick Serpas: "Now that we have offsetting rulings by appeals courts, SCOTUS will hopefully grow a backbone and take up this case and end the debate once and for all. It's going to happen in Tennessee, it's no longer if but when."Marilyn Bell: "The needs of the many ... outweigh the needs of the few. It should be up to state residents to decide."Chris Lawson: "... What has been done here is honoring the fact that the majority of the electorate does not wish to allow same sex marriage benefits to those whom cannot procreate. Nobody has taken away your right to chose your sexual preference, only where you can get married or be married as a homosexual."Pat Hagan: "No equality on Tennessee! What a backward state."

If it's still possible to inject sanity into the marriage argument, maybe there's a third way out there.

Save marriage for the institution it is, between one man and one woman, and allow the individual states to craft civil unions with some of the benefits previously unavailable for those in domestic partnerships.

As it is now, the status of marriage is likely heading for the United States Supreme Court, which would feel compelled to take up the case it rejected earlier this year because there now are differing opinions on its status handed down from various U.S. Circuit Courts.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said as much recently, indicating the pending ruling from the 6th Circuit -- announced late Thursday afternoon -- could add "some urgency" to the debate.

Indeed, the 6th Circuit's upholding of a gay marriage ban involving cases from Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan is contrary to previous opinions handed down in recent months by the 4th, 7th, 9th and 10th Circuit Courts. But as has been the case in the history of the country, a court may rule -- Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding racial segregation, in 1896, or Roe v. Wade, finding constitutionality for abortion, in 1973, for instance -- but that doesn't make the ruling morally right.

And while the whole mess is likely to find its way to the Supreme Court, it shouldn't be there in the first place.

Justice Jeffrey Sutton of the 6th Circuit Court said as much in his ruling Thursday that appellate judges' hands are tied by a one-sentence Supreme Court ruling from 1972, which "upheld the right of the people of a state to define marriage as they see it."

Across the country, over the last decade or so, 30 states have banned gay marriage. Across those states, the vote to ban such marriages averaged 67 percent. It got 86 percent of the vote in Mississippi, 81 percent in Tennessee and even passed in far left California by 4 percent.

"When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers," Sutton said. "Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way."

The jurist was neither swayed by the Supreme Court's inaction on previous cases, saying, "A decision not to decide is a decision not to decide," nor by the previous Circuit Court rulings, saying, "They agree on one thing: the result. But they reach that outcome in many ways, often more than one way in the same decision."

And while the 6th Circuit's ruling was the first by a Circuit Court, it was not the only recent ruling for traditional marriage. In September, a federal district judge in Louisiana upheld that state's gay marriage ban, and in October, a federal judge in Puerto Rico upheld the territory's ban.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, said after the ruling what many people across the country believe in general about gay marriage. They understand the love and commitment of same-sex individuals for one another but don't think such a relationship rises to the level of what for millennia has been understood as marriage.

"Marriage is not merely a creation of any one civilization or its statutes, but is an institution older than the Constitution and, indeed, older than any laws of any nation," he told The Washington Times. "Marriage is a natural bond that society or religion can only 'solemnize.'"

But with growing support across the culture for gay marriage, it may be difficult to put back in a box what should never have been unpacked. But enhanced civil unions could be a compromise.

It's what President Obama supported until abruptly reversing course in 2012.

"The civil unions that I proposed," he said in a 2007 presidential debate, "would be equivalent in terms of making sure that all the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for same-sex couples as well as for heterosexual couples. Now, with respect to marriage, it's my belief that it's up to the individual denominations to make a decision as to whether they want to recognize marriage or not."

Health benefits, rights of survivalship and portability could be some of the enhancements for civil union laws. That way, those domestic partnerships would remain what they truly are, and marriage would remain what it truly is.

The question is whether lawmakers have the political will to make it happen.

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