Smith on "marriage," "equality," and question-begging

Following up on Michael's post regarding Andy Koppelman's review of George et al.'s book (phew!) . . . here's a piece by Prof. Steven Smith, with whose work I imagine most of us are familiar, from Public Discourse, called "The Red Herring of 'Marriage Equality.'"  As both the George et al. book and Andy's review of it remind us, it is not possible to avoid, in the argument / debate / conversation about same-sex marriage and whether its legal recognition is constitutionally or morally required, the question of what "marriage" is.  And, I'm inclined to agree with Steve that, often, the appeal to "equality" (as in "marriage equality") in this context unhelpfully skips past this question, or assumes a contestable answer to it.  (And, Andy would say, in response, that those who oppose legal recognition of same-sex marriage do the same thing.) 

This sometimes happens, of course, in the abortion debate, too, when the question is framed as "why shouldn't a woman have the right to decide what to do with a part of her body?" when, after all, those who abortion would agree that (generally speaking) we all have a right to decide what to do with a "part of [our] bodies" -- the right question is, "is the unborn child, for purposes of answering a question about what we may do to him or her, a person?"