The issue isn't whether Peter Sam deserves to be famous. The issue is how you define "rights."

In response to homophobic rants against football player Peter Sam and his defenders, a friend of mine said he hopes that someday everyone will have the same rights but for now it's good that we celebrate homosexuals who come out because they don't have the same rights we all enjoy.

I agree but the devil's in the details. A right to free speech is well defended for everyone. A right to marry and have it recognized by the state is not, but not everyone agrees that's a right. I still don't get why even bigots complain when gay people want to pay taxes, whether they file jointly or not.

The right to have a job regardless of your minority - religion or sexual identity - is supposed to be guarded, but it's not for bigots or gay people employed by bigots. That's a sticky wicket.

It'd be nice if the Founding Fathers were more clear. Jefferson's pen guaranteed us all a right to "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and that "all men are created equal." Whether he intended it or not, those words were later expanded to include blacks and women, despite protests by conservatives in the 19th century.

Will today's conservatives look as silly in 150 years as Civil War conservatives look today, their intolerance so out of fashion? I don't know.

Here's a devil's advocate argument. If the right to marry is a fundamental right, then it ought to apply to homosexuals. It was hard for interracial couples to get married 150 or even 50 years ago, but we think that's horrid now. Or is that fundamental right limited to marrying per God's standard for sexual behavior? Weren't all men (people) created equal? Not just all Christians, for if we said so we would be promoting the "some are more equal than others" argument from Lincoln's era.

And if the right to marry is NOT a fundamental right, then perhaps we heterosexual couples have no right to expect the state to recognize it. Perhaps we have no right to demand or expect we be recognized as couples anymore on our taxes or wills or custody papers. The frightening conclusion is that if we limit the definition of marriage to the Christian definition, then we are letting one religion define the law of the land and breaching the wall between church and state without saying so. I think you'd call that a faulty appeal to tradition.