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"Separate but equal." I thought we were already done with that ludicrous principle in Brown v. Board of Education. "They can have the same rights, so long as they don't come near us or expect us to actually *treat* them the same."

NO. Civil unions would be a great improvement from what currently exists, but they would not be nearly enough. A world of sexual equality would be a world with universal access to gay *marriage,* yes, marriage, with the same word, the same connotations, the same pomp and circumstance.

And why don't people want to call it "marriage"? Cowardice. They're afraid of the religious evangelicals (whose position on homosexuality is clear enough! Leviticus 20:13) who would object to a word whose meaning has always been both secular and religious being used for something that doesn't fit with their particular narrow-minded religion. They want the homosexuals to have rights-maybe even the same rights-but they don't want to have to *feel* equal, to be faced with the idea that maybe gay people really are the same as straight people in every way that matters. They want to push us (well, I'm bisexual, so actually, *half* of me) aside and pretend they're being nice while they do it.

This debate is like the one people had just before the abolition of slavery: "Maybe we shouldn't free all the slaves *at once,* just a few at a time; phase it in!" "Well, they should be free, but of course not actually *equal.*" "Yes, those people who want *total* equality are just absurd!" I will not be phased in. I demand full citizenship and full respect, NOW, for who I am and not who society wants me to be.

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