The Wasington Post ran an excellent editorial today on election-year machinations in Virginia and Maryland:
POPULIST CHAMPIONS of intolerance in Virginia and Maryland are pushing constitutional amendments that would outlaw not only gay marriage but also civil unions, domestic partnerships and any other arrangement between consenting adults who happen to be homosexuals. Those amendments could have cruel and discriminatory effects, but that is of little moment to some of their advocates, who, confident that the wind of popular opinion is at their backs, assert a monopolistic claim on morality and God's law. We don't doubt that some state lawmakers genuinely believe that gay marriage somehow constitutes a threat to the traditional variety, or that they think that the children of gay unions may in some way be disadvantaged. But those views are tainted by an atmosphere of blatant political opportunism now seizing Richmond and Annapolis.
The hardened cynicism of many Republicans (and some Democrats) must innoculate them to their own consciences as they posture and play with our civil and economic rights.
All but the most extreme among them must surely understand that the common purpose of all these marriage amendments is not to protect anyone's family, but to constitutionally prohibit state recognition or support for all non-'traditional' families, and to entrench a form of legislative apartheid for a whole class of people that not even the old sodomy laws had contemplated.
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