Peter Sprigg, director of marriage and family studies at the Family Research Council
Some politicians have gravitated toward "civil unions," viewing it as a "compromise" position on this issue. This approach allows them to recognize the uniqueness of heterosexual unions by reserving to them the name "marriage," while still appeasing homosexual activists by giving them legal rights or benefits equivalent to marriage.

This approach should be rejected. Civil unions are nothing but a counterfeit form of marriage. Just as counterfeiting currency has the potential to bankrupt an economy, redefining the social foundation of civilization by transforming homosexual behavior into a public norm has the potential to wreak havoc on social life as Americans know it.

Because marriage serves a public purpose -- namely, procreation and the benefit of children and society -- government can legitimately privilege marriage and seek to strengthen it in its policies. The legal "benefits" of marriage are not simply a grab bag of financial goodies to be handed out for political advantage. Society gives benefits to marriage because marriage gives benefits to society-not because some special interest group demands them.

Other relationships such as cohabitation and homosexuality do not benefit children and society, and, therefore, should not be supported by government. In fact, there is considerable evidence that they have detrimental effects on both children and adults. Homosexuality is directly associated with higher levels of promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse. Such behavior should be actively discouraged, rather than being rewarded through "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships."

Gary Buseck, legal director at the gay rights group Lambda Legal
No, because a civil union is not a marriage. As the Massachusetts high court recently said in rejecting civil unions, "separate is seldom, if ever, equal." A separate status is unnecessary except for the very purpose of setting one group apart as unworthy of inclusion in one of our most respected institutions. Creating a separate set of laws for same-sex couples solely because they are same-sex couples is inherently discriminatory.

Although civil unions may seem like an ideal compromise that can appeal to a majority of Americans at the moment, it is important to remember that civil rights for minorities have never rested, and should not rest, in the hands of the majority. Equality is the test of what is right and what will endure and once same-sex couples are married, our society will quickly see the mistake it would have been to create an entirely new institution (civil unions) just to accommodate a temporary discomfort.

Dwight Duncan, associate professor of law at Southern New England School of Law
I don't think so. Civil unions for gay couples are marriage-in-all-but-name, providing, as in Vermont, all the legal incidents of marriage under state law to same-sex couples. There may well be reasons to extend benefits, particularly health and insurance benefits, to people living in the same household who are financially dependent, but little reason to include only those in sexual relationships.

For those who think that male-female couples are really different from male pairings or female pairings (which are incidentally quite different from each other), and that it is marriage's relationship to procreation and mother-father parenting that explains its unique status in law and the panoply of rights and duties that attend it, then the wholesale attribution of the legal incidents of marriage to gay couples does not make sense.

Brad Sears, executive director of the Williams Project on Sexual Orientation Law at UCLA
Civil unions are a viable alternative in the sense that they would provide many of the legal and economic protections to gay couples that marriage provides. It is a better alternative than what is currently offered in all but a handful of states.

However, civil unions do not go far enough. First, they do not provide gay couples with access to the over 1,000 federal rights and obligations provided for by federal law. Second, they do not provide gay couples with the social recognition and support that the institution of marriage provides.

Finally, adopting civil unions places a stamp of inferiority on the relationships of gay men and lesbians just like the Jim Crow laws and segregation policies that kept African-Americans separate and (arguably) equal. If society can give gay couples most of the rights of marriage through civil unions, why can't it allow them to marry? Only because it believes that gay people are not worthy of the same dignity and respect as heterosexuals. Those who are advocates for civil unions but not marriage are stating a position of prejudice, pure and simple.

Thomas Kohler, professor at Boston College Law School
I doubt that either advocates for same-sex marriage or proponents of traditional marriage will be satisfied with civil unions. Same-sex marriage advocates rightly claim that civil unions do not constitute full and equal legal recognition of same-sex relationships that society gives the nuptial relationship between a man and a woman. On the other hand, proponents of traditional marriage accurately point out that civil unions grant same-sex relationships everything but the name. This undermines the unique status that society grants married couples, to whom it has been granted because they procreate and raise children upon which the future of society depends. In the end, I think that only politicians, eager to avoid hard issues and hopeful of garnering support from all sides, will support civil unions.

I think we may be beyond the point of finding a politically acceptable "alternative" to same-sex marriage. Since this question is such a divisive one, perhaps the best thing to do is legally to disestablish marriage and return it to the realm of civil society. The law would be entirely neutral to the institution, neither privileging it nor granting those within it any special benefits or status. As a wholly private relationship, parties would be free to contract whatever sort of relationship they wish, according to whatever rubric they desire. The law would recognize only individuals.

I am far from arguing that this is an ideal solution, and it is a matter about which I need to reflect more, but at least at the moment, it may be the least worst alternative.

Andrew Koppelman, professor of law and political science at Northwestern University
In the short run, yes. Many Americans are willing to give same-sex couples the benefits of marriage, but draw the line at giving them the label. The "civil union" compromise splits the difference in a way that calls forth far less resistance than marriage does. Civil union legislation in Vermont has persisted, and when California passed similar legislation, the national press hardly even picked up the story. Massachusetts' recognition of same-sex marriage, on the other hand, has called forth furious resistance, and it may be overruled by a state constitutional amendment. But in the long run, civil unions aren't likely to be a stable solution, because gay people are unlikely to be satisfied with second-class status for their unions. "Separate but equal" has a terrible history.