The cultural property claim within the same-sex marriage controversy

Arguments are now being marshaled in states with supposedly GLB14-hospitable civil union laws - Vermont and New Jersey, for example - that civil unions do not effectively confer benefits equivalent to those received through marriage after all.15 Thus the issue is squarely raised in multiple jurisdictions: what is at stake in the name and legal status of "marriage," above and beyond the benefits and responsibilities that civil marriage conveys.16 The question is no longer merely theoretical.17 Characterizing the same-sex marriage controversy as a contest over an intangible sacred cultural resource and a problem (from the traditionalist perspective) of signal dilution or pollution can facilitate a better understanding of our contemporary Kulturkampf over gender and sexuality, of which the marriage controversy is a part.18 Progressives tend to believe that allowing same-sex couples to marry19 will not negatively affect the institution of marriage and wider society, or will change and improve them.