"Gays = blacks" is a bad political analogy.

(In which the Rick Warren outcry proves that pro-gay marriage forces really are engaged in a culture war against Christians.)

Let me get this straight: No one who isn't gay can oppose gay marriage because it's not going to affect your marriage. Ergo - it's not going to affect you at all.

Your concerns about the social, political, and governmental effects of such a profound legal shift are unfounded, because your slippery slope arguments are paranoid and after all, gays don't want to impose anything on you, they just want to be left in peace to quietly enjoy the rights that they have.

So you don't need to worry that people like Andrew Sullivan declare war on the "Christianists" and Mormons and the violent Prop-8 protestors because you started it, and they're going to back right off when they get what they want. You're not supposed to care that state bar organizations are considering requiring all new attorneys to swear fealty to the idea of gay behavoir as morally neutral as a condition of practicing law in the state. And you're not supposed to worry about the lefty outrage at Rick Warren's participation in the Obama inauguration, even though he's just there to say a prayer.

Except: Shouldn't we worry about that? Shouldn't we worry that political activists are trying to drum believers out of any participation in public life?

I support civil unions, but not marriage. It's a hard position, because all someone needs to do is throw out the phrase "Separate But Equal" to end the argument. We all know about "Separate But Equal" is evil. No more discussion. And I can certainly see the appeal in trying to analogize the gay-marriage activists of today with civil rights-era crusaders of the past. We can look back and identify in stark moral terms that one side of that issue was good, and the other was evil.

But that analogy backfires. There is no place anywhere near the mainstream of modern society for members of the KKK. Gay-marriage activists, when appealing to that argument, relegate most traditional Christians to the status of Klansmen. They are saying if this is your belief, then get out of society. We don't want you anywhere close to society. And if you give your kid some wackadoo name, we won't put "Happy Birthday, Jesus" on his birthday cake either.

Besides, if anything, the Christians will identify with the persecuted minority in the analogy anyway. The gay marriage activists act as though religious belief is something that can or should be changed. Strong believers might say that that religious belief is more like having a different skin color. It's not something you can change.

If it's just civil rights that gays are after (ie: "the 147billion government benefits conferred by marriage" that we're always hearing about), then perhaps the gay rights movement would be better served by finding a way to attain the rights themselves in a way that allows others to recognize and respect their rights without having to actually change their minds about the morality.

A good way to do that would be to push for marriage equivalent unions that the government labels as something other than "marriage," which has a distinct doctrinal meaning and special significance within many of the Christian faith.