Separate is Never Equal

The first day of court-mandated gay marriage is also the anniversary of another court-ordered move to equality. Brown v. Board of Education was decided fifty years ago today. Brown overturned the Supreme Court's 1896 ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed the poison of "separate but equal" to rule for over fifty years.

The court decided in Brown that separate is inherently unequal. Dividing the population perpetuates inequality, the court said. It's important to remember this when we debate the idea of gay marriage. Some people want to settle for one standard for hetersexuals, and another for homosexuals. A greater percentage of Americans support civil unions than support marriage for gays and lesbians.

While any church should be able to make its own decision about who it marries, the government has an obligation to give all adult citizens the same opportunities. The semantic difference between civil unions and marriage is the same old double standard of separate but equal.