Privileges of marriage

A guy in Ohio who beat up his girlfriend argues that he's not covered by the state domestic-violence law because its extension to cohabiting couples conflicts with the state's anti-gay-marriage amendment, which has a clause designed to prevent civil-union arrangements by denying the privileges of marriage to unmarried couples. An appeals court agrees, and one of the groups that pushed for the amendment actually argues that denying domestic-violence protections to cohabiters is necessary to protect the sanctity of marriage.

I can see the next argument coming a mile off: "look what the gays made us pass!"