Q: When is a civil union not a civil union? - A: When it is supported by a backer of the Federal Marriage Amendment. I've come to this conclusion after continually monitoring press coverage of the FMA debate, which frequently quotes supporters who say that the amendment won't abolish legislatively enacted CUs. Case in point: in profiling my good buddy Robbie George of Princeton, the school paper repeated what has now become a typical figleaf statement by the FMA crowd:

The amendment would create a national definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, "but not forbid civil unions so long as the civil unions were created by the state legislatures and not imposed by the courts," George said.

But just a couple of days ago, the WaPo cited the theocon professor - whose religio-political views make Mel Gibson look like a lapsed Catholic - this way:

In an interview, George contended that marriage, at its legal core, is a "sexual union," and that the amendment would bar states from extending the legal benefits of marriage to gay couples, or anyone else, "based on the presumption that they have a sexual relationship outside of marriage." In his view, however, states could define a civil union as any two unmarried adults sharing a household.

Lesson to be learned? Don't trust a damn thing these guys say, and more to the point, don't let lazy reporting turn their misleading propaganda into conventional wisdom.