Equality is Equality

Chris Geidner quotes Andrew Sullivan from a 2000 piece in The New Republic called "Separate but Equal?" (I can't find an online link to the original):

Legalizing gay marriage . . . is not a radical reformulation of an unchanging institution. It is the long-overdue correction of a moral anomaly that dehumanizes and excludes a significant portion of the human race....

There is in fact no argument for a domestic-partnership compromise except that the maintenance of stigma is an important social value–that if homosexuals are finally allowed on the marriage bus, they should still be required to sit in the back. This “solution” smacks of the equally incoherent half-measure of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” another unwieldy contraption that was designed to overcome discrimination but instead has ruthlessly reinforced it. Equality is equality. Marriage is marriage. There is no ultimate moral or political answer to this question but to grant both. And to keep marshaling the moral, religious, civic, and human reasons why it is an eminently important and noble thing to do.