A number of Republicans who said they opposed gay marriage when they ran for office are now trying to back out of voting to repeal SSM by introducing a new bill: H569--which would abolish marriage for everyone!

H569 would eliminate marriage from the law and instead create a new term "domestic union" that would be available to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. (No word yet on why only two people can do it, or why close relatives can live in "domestic unions" together).

This radical proposal to abolish marriage as a civil status has its roots either in political cowardice or in ignorance:

Back in the 1970s, abolishing marriage was the idea of the loony left, now it's a handful of Republican in New Hampshire who are pushing this radical new agenda?

The government has always been in the marriage business for a good reason: we need to protect children by recognizing and protecting marriage as a legal status.

Imagine what happens when marriage becomes a purely private affair, with the parties themselves privately contracting for only their own personal purposes. Without a clear public marker for who is married, even the adults themselves cannot tell if they are having an out-of-wedlock child. ("Yes baby, we are married in our hearts!") And it will become much harder to tell who is committing adultery, or bigamy for that matter.

The answer to the moral crisis around our public understanding of marriage is not to make the lines around marriage blurrier and less clear, it is to stand up for marriage!