Will offering benefits to unmarried opposite-sex couples hurt marriage as a social institution?

If the experience of France is any guide (see this NYTimes treatment), the answer is yes.

Following months of resistance, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera capitulated last Friday to the demands of [pro-SSM] organizations and agreed to introduce legislation to create “civil unions” between people of the same sex.

Until recently, the otherwise conservative Piñera was receiving the praise of pro-family organizations for his strong stance in favor of marriage, as well as the right to life. Although he had formerly promised to offer a civil unions bill, he had resisted demands by homosexual organizations to do so as a debate raged within his own party over the matter. Moreover, Piñera had strongly upheld marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and defined families in a way that excluded homosexual couples. --LifeSiteNews