Same-sex what?

The Dallas Blog's William Murchison tries to fire up the religious right again just before an election with scare stories out of New Jersey, where the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples deserve similar legal protections and benefits that society gives to heterosexual couples.

Mr Murchison trots out the old argument that discrimination is just common sense. Let's take his own words and recast them as they might have been said during a different civil rights struggle. See how Mr Murchison's arguments sound in a different setting.

What's good enough for whites is good enough for African-Americans, right? Many things are, yes. Civil rights isn't one of those things, as the great majority of Americans seem to know in their bones: otherwise they wouldn't have kept enacting Jim Crow laws at the polls.

In fact, the segregationists never asked for the fight they commenced a half century ago against attempts by judges to ram down society's open throat the judges' own notions like "all men are created equal." It was the judges who started this brawl.

A century ago, Americans had to struggle for women's right to vote. A half century ago, Americans had to struggle for African-Americans' civil rights. Today, Americans have to struggle against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The victims are different in each case. The enormity of the crime is different in each case. But discrimination, large or small, is wrong in all these cases, whether Mr Murchison knows it in his bones or not.

Mr Murchison asks about the resistance of the Christian right wing, "How come those who merely fight back, exercising their First Amendment rights, get accused of seeking darkly to turn culturally diverse America into a Puritan theocracy?" The answer is simple. It's because some people today are, in fact, trying to turn culturally diverse American into a Puritan theocracy.

Mr Murchison says "The notion of heterosexual marriage as an institution worthy of protection and nurture is not vastly popular on the political left." Nonsense. A century ago, advocating a woman's right to vote in no way diminished the respect given to a man's right to vote. Likewise today, extending basic protections and benefits to same-sex couples in no way diminishes the respect given to the institution of marriage. Mr Murchison, on the contrary, is not "protecting" or "nurturing" marriage at all. He's discriminating against gays and lesbians, pure and simple.