Consider the fight for the right to marry, a good example of how some approaches to evening the playing field are at best short sighted. Polyamorous people in stable, committed relationships of more than two people *also* resent that marrieds enjoy legal benefits that are not available to them and their partners. They, too, must set up living wills and irrevocable trusts in order to gain the same rights and protections provided by default by legal marriage. And a fat lot of good the right to marry will do homosexuals in relationships of more than two, and they're out there.

Though relatively achievable, pursuing same-sex marriage is a bankrupt strategy. Many who can and have been married have rejected traditional marriage as irretrievably broken - marriage is *not* the universal key to happiness, despite what some conservatives say. And so it is likely that 50% of hard-won same-sex marriages will fail as well. A better solution is for government to stop favoring marriage altogether and provide equal rights and protections to all *individuals* without regard to marital status, relationship choice or sexual orientation, which are and should be treated as entirely private matters.

As Ben Franklin said to Thomas Payne as he signed the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Best regards, Anita Wagner