No, dworkin, marriage mattered historically because of money; it clarified inheritance issues, not just parentage. It said that instead of A's closest relatives being his parents, B+C, his closest relative was his wife, Z. A+Z's assets would be jointly held, they had authority over each other's property and could speak for each other, and the surviving spouse would have inheritance rights. Historically, many couples have married even if there was no reasonable expectation of children.

The word marriage is universally recognized and has an emotional impact. It immediately tells others the status of the relationship, that the couple should be seen as a unit. If my husband is unconscious and I walk into the hospital and say, "I'm the patient's wife," that sentence is heard and understood instantly, not just in the mind, but in the gut. It means I'm the most important person in his life, talk to me and let me make any decisions. It means I get to decide when and if even his parents visit. It means I can go home from that hospital and deal with our accounts without power-of-attorney, simply by virtue of being married. We've all grown up with the concept of marriage, the status in the spouse's life it accords each spouse. A married couple has that status no matter where they were married and whether they have children or not.

Words matter. Name recognition is valuable. Would the Hershey company be willing to sell their brand name? How much would they lose by suddenly selling the same chocolate under a different name? How many people say there's no difference between Coke and Pepsi apart from the name? Companies spend billions popularizing and defending their brand names. The religious right should not be allowed to steal the word marriage away from non-religious couples and they should not be allowed to impose their religion on gay couples by prohibiting them from marrying. Religious groups in the U.S. should realize how truly fortunate they are to be allowed to conduct civil marriages at all. If we're going to talk compromise, let's put that on the table.

Again, if religious groups manage to separate civil marriages from religious marriages, they'll start attacking the civil marriages in the same relentless and terroristic way they've been attacking abortion rights for almost forty years.

Hi JP Gal, congratulations on your marriage! I live in Massachusetts too. Isn't it great knowing we live in the first state to grant gay marriage and also the state with the lowest divorce rate!

Asehpe:

1. Why should religious groups get this new privilege? Why should couples be forced to go to a religious organization to get what they used to be able to get from the state?

2. Why can't it be marriage and "religious union"? Why should religious groups get the more desirable word? The word whose "brand name" many non-religious people have helped to build up.

3. You said, "people who only have a civil union". If they're equal, why did you use the word "only"

4. You said, "[i]f all civil marriages were to become civil unions with exactly the same legal rights (which is not yet the case), there's no way the employers could withhold benefits or the mortgage company could fail to recognize them: they'd had to stop recognizing all married people to do that."

No, they wouldn't. That would be the point. It might start off with "civil unions" and marriages being equal, but religious groups would lobby hard to take away rights from civil unions. For instance, it's very easy for a health plan to say, "we'll cover 90% of the cost of an operation for the spouse of an employee, but only 50% for a civil union partner." See how easy that was? Now, if all couples were allowed to be married, then an employer or mortgage company wouldn't be able to discriminate between gay and straight couples, just as they're currently not able to discriminate against married couples who were married at the courthouse versus those who were married in a church.

Well, at least it's not second season, when Ilan became "top chef" rather than "the defendant" as he should have been.

I was rooting for Carla, would have respected a Stefan win, but had hoped Hosea would be booted early on so he'd finally be off my screen. He's the only one of the three whose restaurant I would never eat at. Top Chef should have outside chefs come in to be sous chefs for the contestants, as they did Season 3 when Rocco Dispirito, Todd English, and Michelle Bernstein helped the contestants. Seeing failed contestants from prior seasons screw up a competitor, as Casey did with Carla, is frustrating.

It's Carla's own fault though. Carla, like most women, is too nice for her own good, too hesitant to speak up for her own ideas. Pity.

Colicchio has been hinting in interviews that Fabio already has a tv deal. That may be the best result of the entire season.

People can't walk away from their mortgage in every state. I know Massachusetts is a recourse state, where the lenders can go after the former home "owners" for the balance remaining on the loan after the foreclosure sale. Most other states probably have similar laws.

If someone was foolish enough to buy a tulip bulb... uh, I mean house, for 500k and it's now worth 300k, that's the buyer's fault. If it had increased in value, the buyer wouldn't be looking to hand over most of the profit to the government. So why should the taxpayers take the loss?

House prices need to be allowed to crash down to their true new value. The sooner that happens, the sooner the real estate market will get back to normal.

Sure, fred!head, you can have that cramdown. As soon as the government reimburses me for every unprofitable investment I've ever made. I didn't do anything "wrong" there either, it's just the way investments go.