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Yet [David Blankenhorn] writes that "legally recognizing gay and lesbian couples and their children is a victory for basic fairness." Conciliation is more important than culture war on this issue, he argues. The fight to ban gay marriage has not, he acknowledges, helped marriage in any way. And it's clear that an emerging consensus supports marriage for committed same-sex couples. Most disturbing to Blankenhorn is the underbelly of opposition to gay marriage, which was most recently exposed in several ugly episodes during the North Carolina vote to ban all recognition. "[T']o my deep regret," he writes, "much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying anti-gay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing."