Dec 05, 2003  |  By: CHRIS CRAIN  | COMMENTS     

and private benefits have been established for unmarried “domestic partners.”

Most of these benefits were enacted because gay couples couldn’t access all the public and private benefits of civil marriage, although the benefit rules are typically written in gender-neutral terms and more straight couples avail themselves of them than do gays.

If gay couples can get married, should domestic partnership benefits be jettisoned? Or ought we as a society have one level of benefits for “live-in” couples and another, more involved and broader set of benefits for couples that legally tie the knot?

Or are we moving toward a three-tiered system, with gay “civil unions” in the purgatory somewhere in between those domestically partnered and those heterosexual couples who, in the words of the Supreme Court, enjoy the “sacred precincts of the marital bedroom.”

Bathhouse Betty may not have intended to open such a can of worms when she offered her two cents on gay marriage, and Larry “Softball” King certainly didn’t mean to trip her up by asking the question. But maybe we ought to take a stab at thinking about these issues before we petition our government to rewrite a centuries-old tradition.