Gay marriage: One think tank avoids debate, hosts ceremony While some think tanks are in a heated debate over same-sex marriage (especially after Vice President Biden and President Obama recently announced their support for it), others are simply choosing to host the ceremony. Jonathan Rausch, Brookings guest scholar and contributing editor at National Journal and The Atlantic, writes in a piece at Salon how the Peterson Institute for International Economics transformed its auditorium into a space for one of its senior fellows, Joe Gagnon, to marry his longtime partner, Paul Adamczak. Rausch writes: It's a beautiful spring day in Washington, D.C., around 5 p.m. I am arriving at the august Peterson Institute for International Economics. Today, however, the place is not a think tank but a chapel, and the important words to be uttered are not "trade-weighted exchange rates" but "I do." My old friend Joe Gagnon is getting married today to Paul Adamczak, his longtime partner. How I hate that word "partner"! As if Joe and Paul were members of the same law firm. Within the hour, I am pleased to realize, they will be partners no longer. Under District of Columbia law, they will be husbands. Today's ceremony is freighted with extra excitement. Only three days ago, President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. The subject is much discussed here at the wedding. Of course, as an invitee mentions, Obama's endorsement alters not a jot of law, not a tittle of policy. Yet a cultural barrier has been crossed, a taboo forever retired. The highest officer in the land and, by extension, his political party and half the country have embraced today's ceremony as their own. We are a sideshow, an outlier, no longer. Read Rausch's full piece at Salon.