Michael Steel is trying to bring non-bigoted anti-gay marriage arguments into the GOP's language. That's a good thing. I'd like to see more civil (as opposed to religious) arguments for civic law. Here's what he said about gays getting married, from the perspective of a business owner:

"Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for. So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money."

Now, this works as long as you don't think about it. Then you realize, well, straight people get married all the time. Should business owners get all angry when their employees get straight marriages? One way to avoid this would be to fire all your straight employees and hire nothing but gays in a state without gay marriage. Then you really won't have to worry about it.

That's absurd, but I wasn't supposed to think about it. H/t.

But that's the rub, isn't it? There's just not a lot of logical civil law ground to stand against gay marriage, as legislatures and courts across the country are beginning to realize. This is true regardless of the nature of the opposition, which comes either from a religious belief (which, without further justification doesn't deserve attention in civil laws), or the soft bigotry of "ew, they're gay," which obviously doesn't merit a place in the law books, either.

This situation with Steele trying to get away from religious grounds into civil grounds, while admirable, reveals just how little justification there really is. Or, perhaps, the limits of his intellect. Take your pick.