In his Feb. 6 commentary, attorney James Hochberg warned that enactment of civil unions will lead to same-sex marriages. However, he presented no evidence that same-sex marriages, as the alleged inevitable successors to civil unions, would be so detrimental to society that they must be disallowed.

Hawai'i's Rev. Michael Young (Unitarian) asked, "How can 2 percent of the population be any kind of a threat (to the institution of marriage)?"An important point that Mr. Hochberg neglected to mention is that injustice creates momentum for its eventual correction. The greater and more long-standing the injustice, the greater that momentum will be.

No self-respecting minority that has been deprived of equal justice will accept the role of permanent victim. Sooner or later, it will press for full relief from injustice. Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it this way: "I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights."

Attainment of full equality for gays and lesbians is the only condition that can halt the stream of stopgap measures such as domestic partnerships, reciprocal beneficiaries, and civil unions, yet reactionary persons and groups fight tooth and toenail to block full equality and then mindlessly wonder why the campaigns for legal recognition of same-sex relationships don't go away.

When reactionaries' arguments to maintain the marital status quo prove too flimsy to withstand scrutiny in the courtroom, they, as sore losers, attribute this result to "activist" judges who "legislate from the bench." They then exploit brute force, which the numerically dominant majority can exert against any heavily outnumbered minority, to enact constitutional amendments aimed at "protecting" traditional marriage. But even these drastic measures will ultimately be abandoned, because society will one day realize that it damages itself and stunts its own moral, legal, economic and political progress when it inflicts injustice on a part of itself. It's no surprise that the unjust treatment of women and racial minorities is headed toward the ash heap of history. So, too, perhaps less quickly but no less inexorably, is discrimination against gays and lesbians.

That the proposed civil-unions law does not encompass non-romantic couples, such as a man caring for his sick grandmother, is hardly a reason to continue, unabated, the unequal treatment of committed same-sex couples. If the Legislature determines that some or all of the benefits that civil unions can provide should also be made available to non-romantic couples, it could simply fine-tune the civil-unions law or the reciprocal-beneficiaries law.

Available facts do not support the speculative contention that civil unions should be disallowed because they will lead to same-sex marriages, which will, in turn, precipitate terrible consequences.

There is no evidence that civilization has crumbled in Massachusetts and Connecticut and in those foreign countries where same-sex marriages have already been legalized. People in these locations continue to marry and raise children, as before. The sky has not fallen; life goes on.

On the other hand, it is not speculation but fact that existing laws governing marriage are so one-sided that vicious heterosexual criminals, such as murderers, rapists, and child molesters, may marry even while they are behind bars. By contrast, in all but a handful of states, the doors to civil unions and marriage are firmly closed to tax-paying, law-abiding gays and lesbians. This is grossly unfair.

The issue at hand is not about special rights but about equal rights, i.e., liberty and justice, not only for the heterosexual majority, but for all. Our founding fathers recognized that the majority may be wrong, particularly when it demands laws favorable only to itself, and that the majority, if unchecked, could become an intolerable tyrant.

Politicians should bear in mind that their highest responsibility is to do what is right, instead of rubber-stamping accommodations to popular prejudice. Edmund Burke observed that "your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

Neither politicians nor ordinary citizens should disregard injustice in the present because they blindly worship the past. As Thomas Jefferson stated, "laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat that fitted him as a boy, as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Kent Hirata is a Honolulu resident. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.