It’s a free country.

We say that a lot in America, sometimes with a shrug of acquiescence when someone says something we think wacky, and sometimes with an edge of defiance when we claim our right to live our lives as we think best. Freedom—whether it be freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, or, yes, the freedom to marry—is indeed something precious to be exercised, protected, and fought for. It takes real work to win and keep it.

Which makes it so puzzling that someone as committed to freedom as the always provocative Michael Kinsley would devote so much of his latest column to Ben Carson’s freedom of speech, while giving such short shrift, really, to the ongoing denial of the freedom to marry gay people endure—still—in our country (along with the absence of federal protections against employment discrimination or bullying in schools, and the failure of the law to keep pace with the undeniable momentum in public support we have worked hard to win).

Absent from Kinsley’s piece: news that committed gay couples are still excluded from marriage in 38 states

Pretty much absent from Kinsley’s piece is any acknowledgment that loving and committed gay couples are still excluded from marriage in 38 states. Or that those couples who do get married are still subject to the “gay exception” created by the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which denies these legally married couples Social Security survivorship, access to family leave, health coverage, immigration protections, the ability to sponsor a loved one for a green card, and the chance to pool resources as a family without adverse tax treatment.

That’s the political agenda Ben Carson was signing on to and furthering. When a public figure and political dabbler like Carson takes a stand against gay people’s freedom to marry, he is not just offering his opinion—which is certainly his right. He is not just, say, personally opting to boycott a wedding he doesn’t approve of. He is advocating that the law be used as a weapon, that discrimination be cemented into constitutions, and that an important freedom he himself enjoys be denied to his fellow Americans.