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Your heart is in the right place when it comes to keeping marriage strong and protecting the kids, but I disagree. First, such a reform would be politically unworkable. Second, giving the homosexual activists an inch on this is very bad news. For just one example, imagine the curriculum requirements that might make it into the schools if we give legal sanction to homosexual marriage. Third, we would have to either create a third tier for homosexual couples who already have kids, or we would have to allow homsexuals to marry only if they didn't already have children. That puts us back at square one, and even a conservative judge would have to rule that it violated equal protection.

If we're going to strengthen marriage, we either need to tighten divorce laws, change the underlying culture or both. Endorsing any sort of homosexual unions because of the sad state of heterosexual marriage is moving from the stick house to the straw house.

First, such a reform would be politically unworkable.

Why?

For just one example, imagine the curriculum requirements that might make it into the schools if we give legal sanction to homosexual marriage.

Tier two is not marriage; it's a partnership.

Second, giving the homosexual activists an inch on this is very bad news.

I concur if only on processual grounds. The 2% don't drive the 98%, no matter how fabulous they think they are. Otherwise you embarrass the ideal of democracy.

For just one example, imagine the curriculum requirements that might make it into the schools if we give legal sanction to homosexual marriage.

I think it's already there, as witness the scandals in Massachusetts, Ohio, and California.

I really don't favor any countenancing of "marriage" for people who aren't heterosexual couples who entertain at least the possibility of children.

At the end of the day, a shackup is still just a shackup. I agree with you that much of the problem with marriage is the lack of seriousness with which people take it in the heterosexual community at large, and speaking from my personal perspective, with feminist mots like "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

The woman who said that, Gloria Steinem, got married at 61 -- far, far too late to have children. Now she's divorced again. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this woman has a problem with the concept of marriage. And yet she spoke authoritatively to an entire generation of fertile women, on the subject of gender relationships.