Civil unions instead of marriage?

From AP:

"When I speak to women from Florida or Wisconsin or Minnesota, they are like, 'I don't care what it's called, I just want to be able to visit my wife in the hospital and cover my children with my health insurance,'" said Traiman, who helped pass the nation's first domestic partnership law a quarter-century ago in Berkeley.

In the weeks since Maine voters handed the gay marriage movement its 27th electoral defeat in five years, other activists have voiced similar qualms about making marriage their main goal. Gay rights leaders have insisted that anything less than full marriage equality is unacceptable, but some are asking whether the uncompromising strategy has forestalled interim steps that could improve the lives of gay men, lesbians and their families.

"They think the best way to achieve their goal of marriage with all the rights and benefits of marriage is a complete frontal assault, and any other strategy is a betrayal of their goal," Traiman said.

It's an interesting, and age-old, proposal (so to speak): Put marriage off for another day, and go for civil unions today. It's what they did in Washington state this last election, well, in their case it was domestic partnerships with the full benefits of marriage. While I'm not a big fan of "separate but equal" - especially when you can get much more - settling for second best is an interesting interim proposition when it comes to marriage. A few years of civil unions or domestic partnerships on the books, and no locusts in sight, and it will become harder and harder for the Mormon and religious right anti-gay bigots, and the pedophile-enablers in the Catholic Church, to argue that gay unions somehow "hurt" straight couples.

The danger with this approach is when you choose separate but equal over full equality simply because you're afraid to try for more. That's the growing impression of the Obama administration's approach to gay civil rights (and practically every other issue): Why try for more when you can settle for less? That's not a strategic move. It's weakness, and a missed opportunity.