Sen. Chris Buttars doesn't like the registry because it recognizes domestic partnerships other than marriage. His Senate Bill 267 would prohibit city and county officials from creating such registries.

You can hear echoes of earlier fights over gay rights in the language of the bill. For example, it would exempt local laws that extend health-care benefits to a financially dependent adult designee of a public employee so long as the law does not "violate public policy" or "define or establish a separate and distinct category of citizens or domestic relationships other than marriage or recognized family associations involving blood relatives."

That sounds like the old debate over a state hate crimes law, where opponents argued wrongly, in our view, that homosexuals should not be a separate, protected class under the law. By that rationale, it was OK to ban hate crimes based on racial bigotry, for example, but not homophobia.

So it's clear where SB267 is coming from.

We disagree with Sen. Buttars. Our rationale is simple equity. If a city extends health-care benefits to the spouse of a married man, it also should be able to extend the same benefits to the domestic partner of an unmarried man or woman. Salt Lake City's Domestic Partnership Registry would make it easier for private employers in the city to extend those same benefits to domestic partners, just as the city government has.

We don't think that's the same thing as creating same-sex marriages. Nor do we believe, as Sen. Buttars apparently does, that a Domestic Partnership Registry undermines the institutions of marriage or the family.

If we thought that it did, we would oppose it.

Marriage, in our view, entails much more than health-care benefits or being able to visit your spouse in the hospital. We see no reason why the Legislature should prohibit Salt Lake City, or any other city or county, from creating a process that would allow people to declare that they are unmarried, monogamous domestic partners, whether of the same sex or not, and in turn receive health-care benefits from employers willing to extend them.

It seems to us like the right thing to do.