A helpful analogy

Ampersand has a good post today about how seemingly rational arguments against single-sex marriage can, in fact, mask underlying homophobic assumptions (even among those who don't hold overtly homophobic points of view).

No one would support laws that kept blacks, or Jews, or women, in legal inequality in order to protect marriage. No one would argue that they should have never have allowed interracial marriage, because the lives of interracial couples should be sacrificed to protect the rest of us from the horror of multiple-marriage or cousins marrying.
. . .
In contrast, SSM opponents implicitly assume that it is acceptable to force queers to remain unequal, in order to "protect marriage as an institution" in an unproven and marginal fashion. In doing so, they endorse a devaluation of same-sex couples that they would never endorse were they talking about blacks, or Jews, or women.

Worth reading the whole thing.