OP-ED: "Why I Now Support Gay Marriage," by Tom Suozzi, New York Times, 13 June 2009.

Good piece.

Gist: civil unions just don't cut it (they smack of separate but equal systems), but civil marriages are no threat to religiously sanctioned marriages.

So you allow same-sex civil marriages to give gay couples all the same legal rights as straight ones, but you also allow churches to opt out at their discretion. There are and always will be plenty of civil laws that churches essentially opt-out of--like the right to have an abortion (legal, but not acceptable in the eyes of many churches). The same will always be true for gay marriage. But since the government has always granted non-believers the same marriage rights (civil marriages) as believers, such rights must inevitably be extended to gays.

Only fault I take with piece: I could have used a listing of the deficiencies of civil unions compared to civil marriages.

I think most of this debate occurs in a knowledge vacuum, the predominant question being, "Should we let gays get married just like heterosexuals do?"

I guess I'd like to see the debate framed more popularly as: "These are the rights denied to same-sex civil union participants that would be granted to same-sex civil marriage participants. [List.] Now, when it comes to your siblings or your kids or your good friends, do you think it's correct for America to deny gays those rights, so long as your church would still be able to decide on its own whether or not it wanted to solemnize such marriages according to its spiritual traditions?"

That, I think, would be a fairly easy evolution to pursue politically.

So what is the list?