"we have to be willing to name the equivalence."

Indeed. Esther Spurrill Jones just wrote an article in Prism & Pen rebutting a Christian Post editorialist who objected quite strenuously to the "false" equivalence of same-sex marriage and interracial marriage in terms of social justice.

He was quite direct with his contagion/stigma argument, claiming that comparing the two kinds of marriages necessarily means classifying interracial marriage and even Black people as "perverse," which he objected to in highly emotional terms.

However, even though interracial marriage and same-sex marriage are not exactly the same, they share so many important equivalences that even Supreme Court justices have mentioned them.

Each has been declared illegal at various times in history based on Christian principles, for example, and each centers on action/behavior rather than identity.

The Christian Post writer claimed that Black skin color has never been considered "sinful" in and of itself, but that homosexuality is indeed "sinful," therefore no true equivalence exists.

He's unwilling to recognize that equivalences don't have to be perfect to be useful – as he glosses over the legal reality that interracial marriage was outlawed for reasons of behavior rather than innate physical characteristics. The Virginia law the Supreme Court overturned did not criminalize people for having black skin, but for marrying people with white skin. And vice versa.

We should name the equivalences here, because they are very useful thinking tools. The fact that the equivalences are not 100% perfect does not make the tool less useful.