Rhode Island is the lone New England state that has no legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Now, legislation that would legalize gay marriage is being debated at the State House.

Various measures recognizing gay marriage have been introduced at the capitol for a decade. None of them have ever been approved.

Massachusetts and Connecticut give same-sex couples full marriage rights. Vermont and New Hampshire recognize civil unions. Maine recognizes some same-sex domestic partnerships. Rhode Island is the regional laggard. Gay marriage has influential opponents in the state, including Governor Don Carcieri and the Rev. Thomas Tobin, Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence.

Marriage, of course, is fraught with religious and moral overtones. Bishop Tobin has written that state sanction for same-sex marriages implies public support of "immoral sexual activity." Not everyone sees it that way, obviously. The Rev. Gene Dyszlewski, pastor of Riverside Congregational Church in East Providence, says, "Same-sex marriage is God’s plan for humanity."

Dyszlewski is chairman of the Rhode Island Coalition for Marriage Equality, a group of more than 100 clergy, most of them from mainline Protestant denominations.

In a state founded by Roger Williams, the father of the doctrine of separation of church and state, many wonder why religion should enter at all in the gay marriage debate.

One solution would be to call all marriages civil unions or civil marriage. This would make every marriage equal in the eyes of the law. Couples would then have the choice of investing any level of religious feeling _ or none _ into their marriage.

Where is it decreed that a marriage consecrated under the vaulted ceiling of one of Rhode Island’s beautiful churches is superior to a marriage performed on a bluff overlooking Narragansett Bay by a justice of the peace?

Who can say that a marriage done in a house worship is more loving or lasts longer than one entered into at City Hall?

What we do know is that Vermont has recognized gay civil unions since 2000. The Green Mountains have not slid into Lake Champlain.

Recognizing gay marriage does not threaten heterosexual marriages. Massachusetts has the nation’s lowest divorce rate. It hasn’t changed since the state allowed gay marriage in 2004.

Times are changing. A public opinion survey done in last August (2008) by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a nationally recognized polling company showed 49 percent of Rhode Island registered voters supported gay marriage, with 39 percent opposed. More significant is the number of voters under age 40—59 percent—who favor same-sex marriage.

The debate over gay marriage is not theoretical. It affects real people, as my WRNI colleague Flo Jonic reminded us last week.

Imagine losing a loved one and having to wait 4 weeks to claim his or her body. Jonic told the story of Mark Goldberg, a Providence man whose partner of 17 years committed suicide.

Goldberg and his partner, the late Ron Hanby, had married in Connecticut, had mutual powers of attorney and owned a home together. Yet the Rhode Island medical examiner’s office refused to release Hanby’s body to Goldberg, citing a state law that prescribes that a body can only be released to a spouse or blood relative.

Says Goldberg, "there was no reason for Ron to be on a slab somewhere in the medical examiner’s office for over a month. There’s just no dignity in that. And there was no reason to treat me as a non-citizen just because I’m not allowed to get married."

Some day in the not too distant future, when gay marriage is allowed everywhere, people will look back and wonder why there was so much fuss over this issue.

Rhode Island’s experience with gay rights in the 1990s is instructive here. It took 11 years for the General Assembly to approve the measure that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing, the granting of credit and in public accommodations. Hearings of that legislation were noisy and divisive. Opponents asserted a gay rights law would bring flood of complaints from victims of discrimination, clogging state courts.

Of course, no such thing ever happened. Life in Rhode Island went on as usual. Maybe then-governor Lincoln Almond expressed it best when he signed into law Rhode Island’s Gay Rights law in 1995. "This legislation is not about endorsing a particular lifestyle," Almond said. "This legislation is about tolerance. It is about extending Rhode Island’s rich tradition of tolerance to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation."

Almond also said something else that day that has proved prophetic. "I’m not going to have a parade. And in four months nobody is going to be talking about this."