Conservatives shouldn’t just allow same-sex marriage. They should insist on it.

The conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks made that argument in a 2003 column, and the liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. recalled his words when he was in Providence on Nov. 8 to speak at the Central Congregational Church.

Brooks’ argument is worth revisiting now that Governor Carcieri, a conservative Republican and Catholic who opposes same-sex marriage, has vetoed a bill that would give domestic partners the right to claim the bodies of — and make funeral arrangements for — their loved ones. The bill passed the House and Senate by a combined vote of 101 to 1. (Only Rep. Arthur J. Corvese, D-North Providence, voted against it.) Two days after the controversial veto, Carcieri told a gay-rights group he was open to a domestic-partnership law bestowing many if not all the rights of marriage, without the right to marry.

Dionne, who describes himself as a progressive Catholic, said he used to oppose same-sex marriage while favoring civil-rights laws protecting gay people. “I’m not going to say anybody who is against gay marriage is a bigot because I once held that position myself,” he said in an interview.

Dionne said he changed his mind because he was persuaded by the conservative case for same-sex marriage.

In a November 2003 column, “The Power of Marriage,” Brooks noted nearly half of all marriages end in divorce and, in some circles, marriage isn’t even expected. Men “trade up” for a younger “trophy wife.” Men and women split when their “needs” don’t seem to be met. “Marriage is in crisis because marriage, which relies on a culture of fidelity, is now asked to survive in a culture of contingency,” he said.

Brooks noted some conservatives base their opposition to same-sex marriage on biological determinism, portraying men as savages who need women to tame them. “But in fact, we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh and by our gender,” he wrote. “We’re moral creatures with souls, endowed with the ability to make covenants, such as the one Ruth made with Naomi: ‘Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.’ ”

Brooks concluded, “The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.”

Dionne quoted Brooks in his 2008 book, “Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics After the Religious Right,” and he quoted Jonathan Rauch’s book, “Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America.”

“A solitary individual lives on the frontier of vulnerability,” Rauch wrote. “Marriage creates kin, someone whose first ‘job’ is to look after you. Gay people, like straight people, become ill or exhausted or despairing and need the comfort and support that marriage uniquely provides. Marriage can strengthen and stabilize their relationships and thereby strengthen the communities of which they are a part.”

Rauch agreed that until recently no Western society had embraced same-sex marriage.

“But until recently, no Western society had ever understood, to the extent most Americans do today, that a small and more or less constant share of the population is homosexual by nature. Homosexuals aren’t just misbehaving heterosexuals,” he wrote. “Barring them from the blessings of marriage is inhumane and unfair, even if that is a truth our grandparents did not understand.”

Rauch agreed that allowing sex-same marriages would in a sense redefine marriage. But given what we now know, he said, “Today’s real choice is not whether to redefine marriage but how to do so: as a club only heterosexuals can join or as the noblest promise two people can make. To define marriage as discrimination would defend its boundaries by undermining its foundation.”

In his book, Dionne said he understands how hard it is for people who live “traditional lives” to accept same-sex marriage. But he said the main cause of family breakdown isn’t that homosexuals want to wed; it’s that heterosexuals leave marriages to pursue other heterosexuals.

“I confess that watching self-proclaimed conservative traditionalists who divorced one, two or three times profess their loyalty to ‘traditional marriage’ by opposing gay unions made me highly cynical about their supposed fealty to family values,” he wrote. “In 2007, the conservative writer Kate O’Beirne quipped that among the front-running Republican presidential candidates at the time, the only one with only one wife was the Mormon, Mitt Romney.”

Dionne said one of the most extraordinary changes over the last generation has been “increasing openness, connectedness and empathy toward homosexuals.” He said, “This happened because so many heterosexual Americans discovered, as their gay and lesbian friends and relatives came out of the closet, that people they liked and loved were homosexual.”

Consider former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter. In June, Cheney said he supports gays being able to marry but believes states should make that decision. “I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone,” he said.

In opposing same-sex marriage, some conservatives cite the Scriptures and talk about values. But they could just as easily cite those sources in support of same-sex marriage, talking about the values of fidelity and commitment, fairness and equality, love and acceptance.

Newsweek ran a December 2008 cover story by religion editor Lisa Miller under the sub-headline: “Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.”

“In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified,” Miller wrote. “Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins.”

In an interview, the Rev. Christine Johnson Foster, co-pastor of Providence Presbyterian Church, said Jesus says nothing about homosexuality in the Bible, but in at least 14 stories and parables Jesus explores the issues of poverty, the use of money and economic justice. “He talks more about those issues than any other subject,” she said.

And what does that tell you? “That where we put our energies is out of balance,” Foster said. “To me, the amount of energy that goes into trying to keep same-sex couples from committing to marriage is unbelievable.”

In her article, Miller concluded that “religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible” but “in custom and tradition” and “to talk turkey for a minute, (in) a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument.”

A federal judge talked turkey in October when supporters of California’s voter-enacted ban on same-sex marriage argued that Proposition 8 is constitutional because it furthers the state’s goal of fostering “naturally procreative relationships.”

Vaughn R. Walker, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asked: What would be the harm of allowing same-sex couples to marry?

Charles J. Cooper, a lawyer for the group that sponsored Proposition 8, replied, “My answer is: I don’t know.”

But Cooper insisted the government should be allowed to favor opposite-sex marriages “to channel naturally procreative sexual activity between men and women into stable, enduring unions.”

Walker, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1989 by former Republican President George H.W. Bush, said, “The last marriage that I performed involved a groom who was 95, and the bride was 83. I did not demand that they prove that they intended to engage in procreative activity. Now, was I missing something?”

The judge wasn’t missing anything. But Governor Carcieri is. He is missing the chance to usher hundreds of committed couples into the stability of an ennobling institution: marriage.

efitzpat@projo.com