The direct path to equality for the LGBT community is through marriage. Once the LGBT community has marriage equality, everything else automatically follows. Legal discrimination ends.

Individuals in the LGBT community correctly pushed the issue (and it didn't start in Massachusetts or Hawaii, it started in Minnesota in 1971 -- see Baker v. Nelson) and the LGBT legal community, once they had no choice, got in line to construct and manage a national strategy. This strategy is not always followed by individual LGBT citizens (a couple in California decided to pursue their own case even though there's a highly-organized marriage equality campaign in place there and their suit threatened to derail that greater effort -- that suit was, thankfully, dismissed as the issue is before the California Supreme Court), but every LGBT person has a right to pursue their equality in this country as they see fit. None of them are forced to accept their second-class status.

That most politicians of any stripe have not led on this issue is to their shame and history will show them as being on the wrong side. But the decision to fight for equality should never have been predicated on whether or not it would be difficult of if the time would be right. The fight for equality has always been difficult for everyone who has had to fight it before and the time for equality is always now.

I really don't want to bash Mitt over his religion, there is plenty of issue based bashing yet to be done before I deteriorate to that level... but dang, here I am.

Did you hear Mitt say that two mommies is okay? How's about four or five mommies and one daddy? Would we suspect that that is more to his liking? Am reading something into it it that really isn't there?

But hey, he did get part of it right, America is all about choice and the freedom to choose. Freedom, even to do things that other people find offensive.

A previous commenter said that in 2004, pressure from the right wing made the Democrats drive out the GLBT community from the Democratic party by holding them at arms length due to the furor over gay marriage.

What you're not mentioning here is that the Republicans also pretty much totally alienated the whole Log Cabin Republican wing of their own party that year. A good friend of mine, gay and slowly coming out of the closet, went full throttle into the bright sun-light after 2004. We had actually discussed politics before and after. Before, he was a dyed in the wool Republican. And I asked him how he could possibly be that way. He had a lot of reasons, mainly having to do with actually being a conservative in many ways--even socially--though not anti-gay. After the 2004 Republican Convention (whenever it actually took place), he was completely alienated. I remember talking to him the next day. He was nearly in tears, and then when he found out how the leader of the Log Cabin Republicans--who had raised SO MUCH $$$$ for Bush--was snubbed and publically repudiated from the stage. My friend just lost it. Angry doen't begin to cover how he felt. He actually became a gay activist and eventually--EGADS--a DEMOCRAT.

Granted, maybe the numbers of Log Cabin Republicans drive out of the Republican party dwarfs the number of GLBT's who left the Democratic party. Maybe not, because given the rhetoric of the right which pretty much would burn a GLBT person alive along with the cross on their lawn, being held at arm's length by the Dems might not look so all fired bad. After all, there are moderate Democrats like myself who embrace GLBT fellow citizens. Not exactly arm's length at all.

The real danger for queer people is that marriage (with all its conventions) might become the only way to legitimize a same-sex relationship, which would erode many alternatives that queer tradition has worked so hard to establish and protect.

Weren't those alternatives established because same-sex relationships couldn't be legitimized?

In justice, that is exactly what I believe ought to happen. The whole idea of the government blessing and encoding what is actually a very private sphere, marries church and state in a way that is repugnant to those of us who think church and state should be entirely separate.

Civil unions recognized by the state should grant all consenting adults the right to live together and form sexual and financial bonds. This would simplify matters such as insurance coverage, hospital visitation, child custody, and the rights of heirs. Let me put it this way: What government joins together, only divorce court should separate.

This would also make it easier to combat employment discrimination directed towards GLBTs. Although, in truth, the SCOTUS has recently made it quite difficult for all employees to sue for discrimination.

Call me really radical, but I believe plural marriage should be legal as well. So did Mitt's great grandparents. Perhaps that explains some of his discomfort with the whole "what makes a family" question.

It is true that many churches do 'marry' (perform the marriage ritual) same-sex couples, and within the domain of the church recognize the couple as married. It's just THE STATE that won't recognize those marriages. So, on the grounds that same-sex marriage offends certian religious sensibilites, the nation won't recognize them. The upshot: same-sex marriage only happens in church. Kinda weird.

The answer to your last question is because people who get married in a church, synagogue, temple then legalize their union at a courthouse. Because marriage has been traditionally codified in U.S. law, marriage gives the married couple certain rights that are then recognized by insurers, hospitals, educational institutions and employers.

If marriage, as a religious rite, was entirely separate from civil unions as a legal right, then your point would be well-taken.

For years, many Unitarian-Universalist Churches/Fellowships have performed commitment ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples (who could not formalize their unions in law) and also for heterosexual couples (who did not wish to formalize their unions in law). The church/fellowship members then treat the couple as if they were married (ideally, there are always a few jerks).

Joining those who would defend the word Christian against the predations of writers who would like to lump all Christians together, I would plead on behalf of my Christian friends who accept gays and lesbians and their choices that Salon learn to use the words Christian religious right or fundamentalist Christians to distinguish the bigots from others.