Maybe one day the Legislature will recognize the gross unfairness of its denial of basic legal rights - hospital visitation, end-of-life decisions and property inheritance - to unmarried couples.

Maybe one day.

But not this year. Not even when a majority of Utahns favored passage of a hate-crimes law that would enhance penalties in criminal cases where violence and bigotry are directed at anyone because of their "race, color, disability, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, age or gender."

And not even when some legislative backers of Amendment 3, and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., said last year that a questionable provision of the amendment - denying unmarried couples any rights "substantially equivalent" to those enjoyed by married couples - could be fixed with follow-on legislation.

It is true that an overwhelming majority of Utahns approved the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Yet only about half of the state's residents would refuse marriage-like rights to cohabiting adults, gay or otherwise. The Tribune does not support gay marriage but favors granting other legal rights to domestic partners.

The hate-crimes legislation, sponsored by Rep. David Litvack, twice failed in committee. It was the 10th year in a row that legislators have refused to pass an effectual hate-crimes law.

Eighteen of 28 state senators voted down Sen. Greg Bell's bill that would have granted unmarried adults the right to enter into contracts that give them some mutual health-care and property rights. Bell strove to convince his fellow Senate Republicans that his was not a gay-rights bill that would, as some of them claimed, erode the marriage amendment.

To his credit, Sen. Scott McCoy, the gay vice chairman of Equality Utah, was unwilling to lend credence or dignity to those stated reservations: "It's time to call a spade a spade. This is not about their worries about Amendment 3. This is about the fact that they don't want to do anything that would be beneficial to gay people."

We take no pleasure in recognizing the sad truth of that last sentence, or in applying it equally to the demise of Litvack's hate-crimes legislation.

For the Legislature's inaction shames not only the legislators who would deny basic rights and protections to their fellow citizens, but all of us who stand by, year after year, and allow them to do it.