This legal contract should be open to any two consenting adults without discrimination–and not necessarily who one has sex with (though I have been reminded that “traditional” marriage is often woefully lacking in sex). Why can’t two best friends or siblings, who have lived together all their lives and take care of each, other adopt a child together or otherwise gain the benefits of civil union? It is good for society and our communities when adults commit to love and care for children and/or each other.

Like other legal contracts, civil unions would have regulations about how they can be dissolved and what responsibilities each party has for the aftermath.

I’ve seen lifelong marriages that have lasted decades and are really satisfying, gay and straight, and I’ve also seen plenty of miserable ones I’d never want to be part of, also gay and straight. Human relationships are complicated, but we should all have equal rights to pursue happiness or be miserable. I’m all for letting people do their best, and supporting them in that effort where possible.

What you suggest, it seems, is that we create a truly ethical paradigm for marriage, one that would supplant the chattel-based model we have dragged into the 21st Century, which itself evolved from the marriage between our two most violent institutions–slavery and capitalism.

Six states have authorized some version of equal access to marriage in its present form. I wonder if any of these would have subscribed to the retooling of the institution suggested in your eloquent, well-reasoned and radically ethical (dare I say loving?) argument.