Absolutely. These things are incremental and at each step we try to be as fair and realistic as possible.

But what do you think about this?

I think there's something interesting in there, though. In some ways, this argument really acknowledges that laws really are tethered to reality. It's not so much a matter that we can simply will a legal situation into reality. What's fascinating, though, is that this idea that things are sort of stuck in the realities of the past-- that people really do like to be monogamous, that kids really are something that people do, that inheritance issues are going to be there--is a very conservative position relative the progressive approach, which really does sort of say 'we can decide how to structure society'. I mean when was the last time you heard someone say that 'we can educate this demographic because there's 200,000 years of historical precedent'.

I don't care either way. But I'm just noting that there is a profound conservatism within the push to state-defined marriage. Why now want to respect historical precedent as more or less permanent and yet disregard tradition elsewhere?