When two persons -- male or female, gay or straight, married or unmarried -- depend on each other financially and make a life together, they should be accorded certain rights and protections based on that relationship. But too often, a marriage license bestows favored status under Utah law, effectively discriminating against less-conventional pairings.

Fairness. That's all the sponsors and supporters of Equality Utah's Common Ground Initiative, a package of six bills that would extend those basic rights and protections to members of all partnerships, hope to achieve. The first of those bills -- and the least controversial because it does not apply exclusively to gays -- received a favorable recommendation in a 10-4 vote by a Utah Senate committee this week.

The measure extends the right to sue to financially dependent members of non-nuclear families -- same-sex partners, grandmother-grandson, etc. -- in the event of a wrongful death. So long as one individual designates another as a wrongful death heir in a legal document, and a court determines that they had a mutually supportive and dependent relationship, they would be given standing in a lawsuit.

It's the most benign of the bills, but still, conservative activists, who view non-conventional partnerships as a threat to traditional male-female marriages, raised objections. And they won concessions that, unfortunately, portend rough sailing for the remaining Common Ground bills: protections against discrimination in housing and employment for gay, lesbian and transgender people, a statewide domestic partner registry, spousal coverage for domestic partners in insurance plans, and giving voters the chance to amend the second part of Utah Constitutional Amendment 3, which, a court could determine, nullifies all of the above.

Before the vote, committee members added language that deferred to Amendment 3, a ban on formal same-sex marriages (part one), as well as (part two) "domestic unions" that provide the "substantially equivalent legal effect" of a marriage. The committee amended the bill to read that a financially dependent relationship "cannot be construed" as the equivalent of a marriage or civil union. And that concession does not bode well for the rest of the package, particularly the constitutional amendment.

While this newspaper does not support same-sex marriages, and we'll reserve final judgment until all of the bills are drafted, none of these proposals appears to pose a threat to traditional marriages. They would merely extend basic rights to all individuals. Fair is fair. And the Legislature shouldn't stand in the way.