- RAYMOND LUXURY YACHT

Monty Python's Flying Circus

We told you so.

The Republican attorney general of Utah told you. The Democratic candidate for governor, who also happens to be the dean of the University of Utah School of Law, told you. The Don't Amend organization told you.

We told you that the second section of Amendment 3 said what it said. Those proposing the anti-gay marriage amendment, overwhelmingly approved at the polls last November, said it didn't really say what it said.

Now that it matters what the law says, nobody in authority wants a say.

Before the election, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said the second part of the amendment - "No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially equivalent legal effect" - would cause problems for people in, born of, or leaving gay or straight relationships other than legal marriage. It would cause problems involving everything from insurance and inheritance to protective orders and medical decision-making.

Instead of taking Shurtleff's learned objections seriously, many amendment supporters, including Republican gubernatorial candidate Jon Huntsman Jr., said Utah could have it both ways.

We could, they said, pass the amendment and still allow, perhaps even legislate, other sorts of domestic partnership privileges that are increasingly accepted in the marketplace.

Yet when a bill to do exactly that was proposed in this year's general session of the Legislature, it got nowhere. Huntsman was AWOL. Amendment 3 was blamed.

And when Utah State University considered extending employee benefits to same-sex couples, the school's own lawyer told them doing so was likely to run afoul of Amendment 3.

Shurtleff, whose advice was so rudely ignored before, is declining to offer a formal opinion now, unless he's asked by the Legislature's leaders, who probably won't ask because they don't want to stir that pot any more.

The Legislature could take another run at doing the things that even amendment backers said could be done in protecting the interests of people who do not or cannot marry. If they don't, we will see that Amendment 3, just as its opponents said, went too far.