Proposition 8 could turn out to be a win-win for everyone, “if we can stop all the shouting,” writes Douglas Kmiec, a Catholic, pro-Obama Republican law professor. The California Supreme Court’s ruling “is as inconsistent as it is incomplete,” declaring that gay couples must be given equal treatment, and that Prop 8 denies them the marriage nomenclature only. In that contradiction, Kmiec sees a solution.
The state’s attorney general, who believes Prop 8 is unconstitutional, could ask for a court order requiring that the word “marriage” be struck from the state’s laws. All couples, gay or straight, would be given civil unions. It would be up to churches, synagogues, and mosques to decide who they’re willing to "marry." “Religious freedom, a bedrock constitutional value, would also be a winner,” Kmiec concludes.
(More gay marriage stories.)