Then:

The Catholic Church can allow itself only to marry1 heterosexual, undivorced1(and maybe 2 too?) couples.

Some weird cult (so long as no laws are broken) can marry1 several people together into one union.

Gay couples can marry2 regardless of what any religion or cultural group thinks, and can also marry1 in a liberal church, if they so wish.

etc. etc.

And the state can allow any two consenting (unmarried2) adults to marry2. And this doesn't mean much more than that they become each others' next-of-kin, they automatically inherit upon the death of the other, have certain housing / visiting in hospital rights etc.. So even, e.g. two pensioner friends with no family could marry2 for companionship and security (even if they are e.g. both female and heterosexual).

They seem to care about the semantics more than anything else.

However, there is still the linguistic problem: do we still call both forms 'marriage,' or do we restrict the term only to the former? Either way, we're going to upset somebody. I don't think anyone would be willing to use the monikers 'marriage1' and 'marriage2.'

I'm sure slave owners were upset when we abolished slavery, but we did it anyway because it was the right thing to do.

Some gay people I know say they don't really care what it's called as long as they get the exact same rights. Of course others may disagree.

But then there's non-religious people who want to be married without the religious aspect. "civil union" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. That could be a problem.

How about "marriage" and "marriage~" ("marriage prime")?

As a gay man, I don't really care what it's called, but the reason we push for "marriage" over "civil unions" is because of these legal rights. The laws are written for marriage, not civil unions.

It's also about the promise of marriage. Where in the typical marriage vows is reproduction mentioned? "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part." That is what it's about...that promise. That commitment with the one you love.

But still, does a gay relationship need all the same rights as a marriage? I don't know the details of the law, but I suspect that many of the rights civil unions do not have are in reference to providing a good environment for families.

So, I still stand by my original thesis, that the intent of marriage as an institution is primarily for reproduction, so a gay relationship doesn't require the same rights. I'll do more research to determine whether I'm right, but if you happen to have any info that can help I'd appreciate it.

Also, in response to matt and unalone's point, yes they are not equal and should not be because they are not functionall equal. Your position just begs the question when it comes to the crux of the debate. If marriage is functionally defined, then relationships that don't accomplish the same function shouldn't have the same rights and societal support. Really, how difficult is this for people to understand? Show me anything else with the same level of institutional support for something as ephemeral as "love," and I'll buy the argument that marriage is essentially about love.

That's where you are wrong. It's an issue of rights, not of function. Why would it make the slightest bit of difference if anyone cares about anything? It's just a word that you want to take away from people: separate but equal.

Lots of straight marriages don't exist for the purposes of reproduction. And no one reputable disputes that gay households raise children just as well (if not better, on average, because of higher incomes and older partners) than straight households. Why would you want the children of gay parents to be raised in unwed homes?

At this point, it's completely and entirely an arbitrary decision, made because people like you feel like there is something special about this word marriage that gay people don't deserve. The best solution is to completely eliminate marriage at the federal level: civil unions for all. But that obviously isn't practical. That leaves us with an obvious violation of the Equal Protection Clause in wake of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia.

You know you are going to lose this issue in the long run. You can't win. Conservatives never win, because change always wins in the long run. We're about 12 years of voter demographic shift or 2 US supreme court seats from winning this issue that doesn't even deserve to be an issue. Give it up; why make people that love each other wait?

Second, what does it matter whether I think marriage is special or anything, or who wins or loses on the issue? I expect you are right, and gay marriage will become accepted at the federal level, precisely because so many rich and influential people are behind it. Is that a good reason to throw away my argument? No. So why bring it up?

My argument is that insofar as the gay marriage movement thinks marriage is special, they should reconsider what they are doing. Otherwise, why push for this particular right? What makes it a right anyways?

As for the function of marriage, gay relationships are naturally non reproductive. You have to use artificial means to do this, which is restricted to the more affluent class. So, unless gay marriages are going to automatically qualify for artificial reproduction, they are inherently not going to have the same capabilities of heterosexual couples. Besides, is artificial reproduction anywhere near as successful? Plus, affluence doesn't create good kids. Look at all the rich kids committing suicide and living horrible lives. Do you have any kind of evidence to support your claim that children from gay households are equally or better mentally, emotionally, and physically formed? If you can provide counter evidence/arguments to these two points, then I'll accept the position that gay marriage should be allowed at the federal level.

If not, then it is immoral to force such an unproven and unsupported position on all of America. Keep it at the state level so people can still make choices about what kind of environment they live in in America. Otherwise, I just see this as deeply un American, something of a totalitarianism of the upper middle class. Precisely why we broke off from England in the first place.

Finally, yes, it may look like conservativism always loses. But, that's only at the social, cultural level. In the end, these different institutions are only so good as they are at perpetuating themselves. So, if conservativism is always losing, have you wondered why it hasn't gone away by now? It's because it is so much more sustainable than liberalism, so it is always around to "lose" to liberalism; whereas as soon as liberalism wins, it kills itself. Look at Rome. Look at Europe. Look at the USSR. China may be a counter point, but they've been tearing themselves up to get where they are, so I think it is too soon to tell.

So does this mean that post-menopausal women shouldn't be allowed to get married?

Men with vasectomies?

People not interested in having children?

If procreation is its only use, then lets be consistent.

Besides, you can't tell something to evolve. You can tell someone to intelligently design something, though. Is that what you mean?

Everyones' counter arguments here have only further supported my points. I still don't understand why people are so convinced that gay marriage is a good idea.

Treating people equally isn't fundamental to our existence either, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

Anyways, that wasn't my point. rms said that law supports gay marriage. But it only support interracial marriage because interracial marriage is also heterosexual. So rms misses the point of the law.

Thank you, anonymous downmodders.

Anyways, my argument is good precisely because it is contrary to racist arguments. Racist arguments are wrong because they are based on appearance when we should be more concerned with how people function.

Besides, I don't think you really discriminate against discrimination like you say you do. Don't you want to discriminate against pedophiles being baby sitters? Why? Isn't it because the function of a baby sitter is to protect your children, and a pedophile will do the opposite? Roles and institutions are created primarily to fulfill functions. If you undermine the function, then the role and institution go away. That is what I'm saying in regards to marriage, and is the rational (vs prejudiced) reason why people oppose gay marriage.

People value marriage because they care about their children. If the institution is jeopardized, it significantly harms their ability to raise their children well, or even at all. As another commentator pointed out, just look at areas of our society where marriage has disappeared. The coincide with our highest crime rates and violent behavior.

So, if you are willing to not even consider this possibility merely to avoid offending people, you worry me. It further irks me that this policy, like a number of others, originates from the very well to do and highly educated sector of America where the negative reprecussions will not be felt. However, these policies have been devastating for the poor. For example, look at the impact of abortion and welfare on black communities. Worrying about offense in these cases isn't really worrying about others. It is worrying about yourself.

I'm from Massachusetts. I'm exceptionally proud that my state was the first to legalize gay marriage. But I'm worried that it'll just make us into an enclave while the rest of the country says, "Oh, those crazy New Englanders, it's just gays and hippie liberals up there. Don't bother listening to a word they say."

Prop 8 failed by 5% of the electorate. If you could convince 5% of California voters that the sky does not fall when gay people get married, you could win rights for all 36 million of California's citizens. That's 6 times bigger than Massachusetts, and close to 3 times bigger than the total population of New England. And it'd provide an example that's impossible to marginalize for the rest of the nation.

If the initiative process can be used trivially in a "%50 + 1" way to deny civil rights to a minority group, then does California have a meaningful constitution? If an initiative appears to violate the constitution, and it's fairly trivial to get it on the ballot as an amendment to the constitution, then the notion that an initiative could be unconstitutional becomes meaningless, right?

So I actually do hope that the courts strike this one down. Partly because I'm opposed to prop 8, of course, but also because I don't want a state constitution that can be changed in such a meaningful way by a "fifty plus one" majority.

The California Constitution distinguishes between "amendments" and "revisions" to the Constitution. Amendments can be used to clarify the Constitution and require a 50%+1 vote. Revisions are necessary for far-reaching changes to the Constitution and need a 2/3 vote in the state Legislature followed by a 50%+1 referendum vote.

The argument is that if mere amendments can be used by the majority to deny civil rights to a minority group, it would render the Equal Protection clause ineffective (a far-reaching change), which would require it to go through a "revision" process and not just an "amendment" process.

Then amend the constitution, if it is so "trivial."

$25M from LDS really helped the pro-Prop 8 lobby. The amount of dramatic fear mongering that went on was staggering (Teachers will be forced to make your kids queer! If gays get married, your marriage is worthless!)

Fundamentally, there is no argument against gay marriage that does not involve religion. Separation of church and state and equal protection under the law together will make this a SCOTUS issue, IMHO. IANAL.

I should probably clarify what I mean by "trivial" - I mean this relative to the usual process of amending the constitution. In a purely political sense, it was not "trivial" for the pro prop-8 even to get a 52% majority on this issue from a political point of view - it took a tremendous amount of money and effort.

What I mean is that the difference between getting prop 8 passed as a constitutional amendment and as a standard statute seems fairly "trivial" when you consider how profoundly different these types of legislation are... one is essentially beyond the reach of the courts.

I've read something similar to what jorgeortiz85 wrote - that a true structural change in the constitution can't be enacted with the "%50 + 1" initiative process.

But what I saw here was that prop 22 was passed by the voters, struck down by the courts as unconstitutional, and then resubmitted as an amendment. If it's not much harder to submit it as an amendment, then every initiative that could be deemed unconstitutional would just automatically be submitted as an amendment - and if the courts are lenient about allowing major changes to be submitted as amendments, then it would be "trivial" to use the "%50+1" majority to put minorities at a legal disadvantage, outside constitutional review.

As for what it takes... shoot, I'm really pretty ignorant here. I think it's just a matter of getting more signatures... I think it's about 50% more, but I really don't know, and I'm not sure how to look this up... if anyone does know, please post!)

As for what it takes, you can see that right here: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_h.htm

I fundamentally agree with you that 50%+1vote is flawed and puts minorities at a disadvantage.

I'm all for gay rights, but this article's premise is completely ridiculous.

If you believe his premise -- which a lot of folks seem to -- losing a chunk of the gay (and gay-friendly) population is a serious issue for a successful startup-y environment.

It turns out that the literature about child development finds that much more important than "one of each" parent is having multiple available adult figures around that a kid feels comfortable talking to.

This is for at least three reasons:

1. The kid can get multiple viewpoints.

2. The kid, during adolescence goes through the process of distancing themselves from their parents and during that time needs other sources of adult guidance.

3. The kid can compartmentalize what they talk to different adults about (one about sex, one about drugs, hopefully me about rock and roll.)

Lacking that, a kid will get information from other kids. That's a dangerous road.

People should just do whatever they want.

It's like people who call HTML a programming language.

I think hijacking the word to mean other things muddies and confuses things for society, when there's actually an opportunity to use a new word to mean marriage between a same sex couple.

The fact that roughly 50% of marriages end in divorce (at least in the U.S.) makes whether or not marriages create said optimum situation the decision of a rounding error, more or less.

To be fair, I guess I can't say for sure what I think about whether marriage is important to kids until I have some of my own.

Perhaps messing with tradition is risky, as was trying to fly. But I'm ok with that.

PS: A lot of people stay married to the end because one spouse kills the other is that a benefit?

Yes this means I consider same sex families and single parent families "sub optimal". No, I would not suggest for a second that having a child requires "optimal" conditions.

I grew up in basically a single parent family. There are a lot of things I know I would have been able to benefit from (that I've learned and am learning along the way) had this not been the case.

We need to stop pretending that every different way of raising a child somehow produces the same results. At the same time we need to realize nobody is able to provide the optimal conditions all of the time.

Note that seventeen comments after you make this case, when I concede some obscure point about the value of men or women in parenting, I'm just going to come back at you and say that this is really just evidence that we should ban divorce, like Ireland once did. What it has to do with gay marriage, I don't know.

However much we lack strong heterosexual families, we're more awash in mediocre heterosexual families, and far more disturbed by unplanned single-parent families. You will have a hard time saying that a child will do better in a loving two-parent gay family than in the median family in the US.

Is it possible that children will, for a variety of reasons, some of then intrinsic and some of them extrinsic (such as societal pressure against homosexual parents --- the same arguments that might be marshalled against racially diverse couples), do marginally better in the Ozzie and Harriet family of the '50s than in the Ozzie and Ozzie family of the '020s. I concede the last point you just made, up front. But that argument doesn't preclude my argument, which is that availability of loving gay couples to raise wanted children will be a net benefit for society and for children.

http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/fathers.php

You will have a hard time saying that a child will do better in a loving two-parent gay family than in the median family in the US.

Which is why I'm specifically not saying that. In fact, this is what I said: No, I would not suggest for a second that having a child requires "optimal" conditions.

* single parent homes

* poor single parent homes

* poor and middle-class single parent homes where the single parent works full-time and has less influence over their children

* poor single parents homes in cultures that overtly disrespect fatherhood and implicitly promote weak family structures

I grant you immediately that it's not optimal to be raised in single-parent households --- with the obvious caveat that you have to control for income, culture, setting, and atypically excellent parents that pull it off anyways.

It looks like you & I agree more than we disagree.

And he kicks ass: he's smart (probably smarter than me), well-liked, well-adjusted, confident and happy.

Seriously, at six he already rocks. I honestly think he's doing better than if me and his mom were together.

Seriously? You don't see any value in having both a male parent and a female parent?

Is there some huge man-woman socio-cultural hoo-hah I'm missing about what our relationship imparts on our children that would be dramatically different if I was replaced with an equally loving woman? Perhaps the pancakes would become crepes (though I'm good at that too). The whole of western civilization shudders.

There might be a real argument you have to make, axod, but you have to actually make it. Innuendo doesn't cut it.

Look into how badly boys do at school when there teachers are female - or how badly girls do when their teachers are men. The evidence is that neither do well in those circumstances.

Women and men are very very very different thank goodness. If you're missing out on either of them, you're missing out on a complete other world.

Just from my own anecdotal evidence, my ability to learn from a teacher was based far more on their knowledge and passion than their genitalia.

I'm sorry but if you believe that you're blind, or really haven't lived.

Your statement sums up what is wrong with the political correctness/equality mob. Men and women are not equal. They will never be. Thank goodness. Celebrate the differences. Embrace them. Don't just blindly pretend they don't exist.

http://www.menteach.org/news/its_not_who_but_how_boys_are_ta...

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/boys-taught-men-do-better-stu...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/30/primaryschoo...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5294854.stm

"A study of 25,000 pupils by Stanford University economist Thomas Dee found children did 4% better in tests when their teachers were of the same sex"

"In general, girls learned more with female teachers and boys with male teachers"

"A large fraction of boys' dramatic underperformance in reading is linked to the fact that their reading teachers are overwhelmingly female," Dee concludes.

There are a large number of similar studies with similar results.

My experience, including my kids experience of various teachers, is that they are not.

Of course it's a "controversial" study - it highlights differences between the sexes. Which isn't "cool" in this politically correct age.

The claim you're citing is surprising not only because it defies conventional wisdom (which it does), but also implies that whole of the American educational system is built on an easily-corrected inefficiency. Why can't you marshall better evidence for your extraordinary claim? Why don't you have a better source than an untenured Swarthmore professor writing in a journal with dubious peer review?

one needs a legal binding contract for these things? i mean seriously. this is adult stuff, if "the law" is the only thing preventing you from sleeping around, then you aren't mature enough to be in the kind of relationship that requires it.

and as far as kids are concerned. i highly doubt a legally binding marriage of two people who don't want to be together being forced into raising a kid would create an optimum situation. if they want to be together, they will be. and if they don't, moving on is far healthier.

Right. And the majority of grown adults are not.

Also I think it's a good idea to make breaking up a family hard.

Are you blind? You haven't noticed that it's ghetto shit-hole everywhere in modern world that stable two parent families aren't the norm? Marriage in its traditional form is an institution arrived at through a Darwinian process of cultural selection. It has been proven by time to be the best way to further a society. Messing with it is extremely dangerous.

Cultural conservatism is much like environmentalism. You just don't want to go blindly messing around with complex natural systems. The consequences are usually bad.

For starters, monogamy in highly socially stratified societies is a very rare social phenomenon. You might want to check out "The Moral Animal" for some discussion of this. The line I remember: "socially stratified monogamous cultures are the true freaks of nature" (paraphrasing here, but I'm close).

However, they do tend to be the norm among highly prosperous and free societies, which takes us to your second point...

Haven't you noticed the strong correlation between wealth and freedom and gay rights? Look who is for gay marriage and who is against it. Genentech, Google, and Apple were were very high profile donors against Prop 8. This isn't just a San Francisco leftist coalition - we're talking the biggest, heaviest hitters in the most innovative fields in America.

I agree with you that Scandanavian countries are lauded a bit too much by the left... but let's compare these economies (where gay rights are supported strongly) with the cultural and economic environment in regions where they are not... oh, say, Afghanistan?

Even in the US, the regions that support gay marriage tend to be attracting the best companies with their top notch workforce. They companies come to them, not the other way around. The regions that don't are still wondering what low skilled factory they're going to be able to attract to replace the textile mill that closed in the seventies.

Seems to me like this one is pretty obvious.

The point is, being wealthy and free does not give one a more "correct" opinion than one who is not.

And I don't see a strong correlation between "wealth and freedom and gay rights". I see a strong correlation between gay rights and political image.

Now, that doesn't mean you're wrong about the social catastrophe that the failure of marriage brings in poor areas - just because wealthy episcopalians get divorced all the time doesn't mean they experience financial disaster when they do. They're well off enough that they can just split into two (or three or four) different households and still have enough to pay the mortgage, fix the car, buy clothes, and take nice vacations.

But I will definitely disagree that they are wealthy because of strongly bourgeois family traditions. Man, that's the last phrase I would use to describe these people.

For the record, I was in the 10% of the class that lived across town, and didn't come from a family with that kind of money - though I would certainly not describe myself as deprived or from a social class that feared financial catastrophe.

By the way - I'm genuinely interested in hearing why you think that gay marriage would be a threat to marriage in poorer areas. I do agree with you that families are important and should be protected - but why from gays? That one doesn't really make sense to me. It seems like poverty, layoffs, long shifts, poor schools, and so forth threaten families. Adultery and constant conflict (I'm not talking about the truly criminal violence, just the way people can be constantly fighting) can also obviously wreck a marriage - though I think that's often a symptom of the things I listed above.

Gays getting married? Seems like the last thing I'd worry about. This is why the anti prop-8 crowd is so frustrated to see the Catholic, Mormon, and Evangelical churches so actively working to ban gay marriage. It's like: people are hurting, and this is where you put your resources?

1. You seem to have settled on a root cause ghetto shit-holes being the lack of social and cultural bonding rituals between one member of each gender. Generally, I look at cultures like that and see things like oppressive governments, lack of stable, productive economies, and the absence of anything resembling education causing strife? I haven't seen anything to suggest that oppression comes from the lack of observing ritualistic pair-bonds. Perhaps you have data to prove me wrong?

2. Marriage is not a natural system. Nor is culture, except for the tendency for humans to form them. That they manifest at all seems to be a product of human nature; how they manifest seems much more based on environment and random variation. Otherwise, our culture would be indistinguishable from that of everyone elses. Or are you suggesting that we are still in the process of cultural selection, and ours will inevitably prevail?

Looking back it's hard to extrapolate the value of "traditional family values" because we have a lower crime rate, better educated population, and a better economy now than we did back with they where more common.

No, it's been changing fairly rapidly for less than 100 years, and usually with serious unforeseen consequences.

> Look at marriage in nortic countries

I'm tired of hearing about nordic countries. First, they aren't nearly as great as the pom-pom crowd thinks. If you do an apples to apples comparison of middle class whites in northern US states to nordic countries, they're really not so fantastic. And there is plenty of hand-wringing about social degradation in Sweden. They're, what, one generation in to their shift away from more conservative arrangements? Give it time and you'll see problems.

Woman's rights have been on the rise for much longer than 100 years. (I hear they can vote, own property, and even work in the theater.)

I used to be a crime to have sex outside of marriage but that's been on the decline for a long time.

There used to be limits on who could marrie based on class and or race lines. (Duke's don't get hitched with just anyone you know.)

Dowery's used to be common but now it's mostly just the wives family paying for more of the wedding. (This trend has been going on for a while.)

Divorce was introduced by one of the Henry's (he killed most of his other wives but their was one he liked.)

I could go on but most of these trends are a lot older than 100 years. One of the few things that does not really seem to change is infidelity. Genetic tests have shown that married women tend to have about ~20% of their kids from someone other than their husband. This does not seem to have changed much over time.

PS: Nordic marriage traditions go all the way back to the vikings, but they don't look much like "Christian" family values.

the law should simply allow simplification of contract terms should they be required (custody, assets, etc).

the idea that "marriage" is a set legal method that is rigid and unyielding to change is retarded. the concept is so ridiculously outmoded. society and culture have moved on, it's time for "marriage" to get with the program

Have you read ANYTHING about these polygamous communities? They produce cast off boys and a trickle of 15 year old girls fleeing rape by 50 year old men. I would argue these are long term consequences of polygamy itself, not features of communities that happen to practice it.

If anything, the lesson is that making something illegal pushes it underground, which makes it harder to protect those that may suffer from it in addition to punishing those that would gain from it. This is a lesson demonstrated over and over again -- there are even comments about it in the Tao Te Ching.

How much for your daughter?

To the State, marriage is a mechanism for forming binding contracts to create viable economic units for raising small children. All the stuff the State tacks onto it, like tax breaks, are in support of that primary goal.The State does this because it needs a fresh supply of well-raised kids in order to fulfill its responsibilities, which range from schools to manning the military. In the eyes of the State, if you take the benefits of marriage and don't have kids and raise 'em good, you aren't upholding your end of the bargain.

Equal rights for their own sake is a laudable goal, but someone is going to need to articulate to the State what the benefits to the State of gay marriage are. Once that's done, you'll see some progress.

   forming binding contracts to create viable economic units for raising small children.

That's a pretty shaky assertion. I doubt there's a society in human history that didn't treat cultural traditions and taboos as law in some form.

Are you for legal incest and sibling marriage?

Your examples are debatably child abuse in the likely of troubled pregnancies, and so could reasonable be treated as violence. I'm all for laws against violence.

One take away is that you don't need laws against taboos. They are taboo and so largely self enforcing.

Gay couples cannot carry out the same tasks as Heterosexual couples.

What about a marriage between a man and a woman who adopt a child? Are they allowed to be married?

Or are you implying that heterosexual couples raise their children better than homosexual couples? That'd be a pretty tough claim to support.

0 homosexual couples can conceive.

I'd also say yes heterosexuals are sure to raise kids better. What could be better than getting both a woman and a mans point of view on the world? :/

Wouldn't you worry if you sent your son to a school where all the teachers were women? I'd say he would be missing out on something.

How about the points of view of multiple women and multiple men? You make the mistake here of assuming that there only are two fundamental points of view, delineated by gender, that people are exposed to. By that argument, it should be trivial to map gender to things like political party, religion, or any of a number of other perspectives? That we don't see this suggests your premise is wrong.

Should infertile couples not be allowed to marry?

0 post-menopausal women can conceive.

Should post-menopausal women not be allowed to marry?

It's not really a marriage, so maybe it should be called something else, just as with homosexual civil unions. But of course there's no way to determine infertility, so it's not practical. It's very practical for homosexuals, though.

There's a very practical suggestion. If I lived in California I'd be tempted to put it on a referendum and see how many votes it loses by.

Wow. So a couple that chooses to be married yet chooses no children is also not a "real" marriage?

I don't understand. Do we need more people? Is there a population shortage? Six billion isn't enough for what exactly?

I'd say we need more smart people.

It would be scary if the smart people stop having kids. The world would be taken over by stupidity.

Then I have a simple suggestion based on the same wide-ranging generalisations you base your reasoning on:

Make marriage illegal for all the heterosexual couples who believe that same-sex marriage should be illegal.

Um, Jesus walking on water? Talking snakes? Worshiping a book that condones slavery? Believing that there is a "God" that just popped into being out of nowhere existing beyond time, and that this idea is more likely than the universe just always existing beyond time?

The Branch Davidians called. They want their delusion back.

BTW your comments about liberals don't apply to all of us. I'd be very happy to offend you, and I'm sure it wouldn't be hard, since you seem to be a conservative.

Just because interracial couples can't produce pure-bred babies in the same way as same-race couples, and just as same-sex, infertile, and "mature" (beyond the healthy child bearing years) couples cannot conceive children together in the same way as some people... doesn't mean a tyranny of the majority should have the ability to take away their civil rights.

The racists of the 60's called, they'd like to work with you and your brilliant ideas.

But that's besides the point. The real story here is that Prop. 8 passed mostly due to the high turnout of African-American voters as a result of Obama's candidacy. As a block, American-Americans tend to vote against gay rights and gay marriage issues, and so the high turnout was what swung the ballot in favour of Prop. 8.

The lesson here should be that the gay community of the US has not done enough to reach out to the African-American community in order to gain greater acceptance and understanding. Despite all the advocacy against white religious conservatives and high-profile court campaigns, there has been precious little effort in convincing voters why they have nothing to fear and why gays should have the right to marry because that would be fair and just.

Until that happens, gay Americans are going to have to be content with winning brief victories through the courts while fearing each and every time the general public is given the chance to have their own say on the issue.

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com points out that first-time voters voted against Prop. 8 by 62-38, while experienced voters favored it by 56-44. Therefore, if Obama's candidacy had not boosted turnout, Prop. 8 probably would have passed by an even higher margin.

Yes, black voters voted 70-30 in favor of Prop. 8, but they were only 10% of the electorate, and lots of other demographic subgroups favored it as well. (E.g., 22% of the voters attend church weekly--I bet that 22% includes the vast majority of the black voters--and they favored Prop. 8 by 82-18.) So I think treating the black vote as the reason for Prop. 8's passage is unfair.

But even if the black vote was not pivotal in this case, Silver's analysis still validates the chief point I was trying to make, which is that support for gay rights amongst African-Americans is frighteningly low and that the gay community's advocates are not doing enough to understand and get the support of the only community in the United States that truly understands what it means to be denied rights that others enjoy.

It doesn't have to be this way.

PS: There's a black church on the south side of Chicago which is unusual, for black churches, because it stands firmly in favor of gay rights. Its pastor, until recently, was a guy named Jeremiah Wright. You may have heard of him.

As for Wright, I think if we go by the rest of his sermons (which were frequently racist), his support for gay rights is as likely to be because of his desire to be contrarian and controversial as it is due to deep-seated personal convictions.

They should have equal rights in terms of their union, but in terms of procreation and furthering the species etc, how can they?

Racism doesn't really have such an argument does it.

I just don't see why the word matters all that much. Surely as long as you are equal in the eyes of the law, why not have a different word to mean same sex marriage? Then if you say "joe is married" you don't have to ask "to a woman? or another man?".

Alan Turing was gay, and never had children. He developed the code-breaking machines that allowed the Allies to win world war 2. Don't think for a second that Churchill being able to read Hitler's mail before Hitler read it didn't "tip the balance".

So it sounds like gay people can further the species without procreation. In fact, I'd argue that smart people (gay OR straight) are better off not having children until their career has 'peaked'. For the truly brilliant -- the Turings and Einsteins of the world -- a child is not going to be "their greatest accomplishment".

Seriously, a gay man basically did more for Western civilization than you or I or any Veteran still alive has. He was shamed into killing himself because of his sexual orientation. You'd really object to his happiness?

sigh. I'm going to stop here before I pull a Godwin.

I don't care if gay people wish to have even more rights than me. Fine. Just don't mess about with a word that has been defined clearly for a long time.

You DO realize that the definition of marriage has changed several times, right? Women are no longer property owned by their fathers until transferred into the possession of another Man. Being of different race no longer means you can't get married, either.

Furthermore, we re-define words all the time in the computer field. Think about how the definition of "fast" gets redefined every 18 months to to years. And how what was "fast" is now "slow".

Hands down you cannot string a rational argument against gay marriage because there isn't one. Its based on cultural fears, and intolerance. You're on the losing side of history, next to the Mississippi state police that physically assaulted my father and his friends for helping black people register to vote in early 60s. Next to KKK. And the confederates, and so on. Have fun explaining to your children or your children's children, who will grow up with gay marriage, how you were the bigot.

What?? Do you know what definition means? The definition of fast has never changed. Absolute values you might be measuring have.

Hopefully my children won't grow up with gay "marriage", they'll grow up with "marriage", and "gay marriage/union/whatever they want to call it". That's an important distinction.

You keep using the word "gay" -- are you not aware that that word has changed its meaning?

* A nun is married to God (in some religions)

* A priest is married to God (in some religions)

* A man can be married to more than one woman (in some religions)

* A woman can be married to more than one man (maybe in darkest Africa, who's to say?)

* A man can be married to a woman

* A man can be married to a tree (in India, true)

* A man can be married to a man

* A woman can be married to a woman

Why are you so sensitive about words, anyway?

Gay was defined for a long time to mean happy.

Conservative used to mean saving and preserving and conserving, instead of spending, destroying, and squandering.

Faithful used to mean good, just, and moral, instead of vituperative, devious, dim-witted, and delusional.

Words get redefined all the time. Get over it.

PS: I honestly just get creeped out when people start talking about labels as if a word by it's self means something.

(NOT).

There was some story about people who where both adopted got married and then found out they where siblings. And yea it's creepy, but while I would be ok forbidding them from having children (for the public good) I don't see the value in forcing them to break up. And, even forbidding something on genetic grounds becomes a slippery slope problem because it's one step from their to sterilizing people.

If you are going to rag on same sex 'marriage' as not being truly 'marriage' for any of the reasons you state, then you also have to discount many heterosexual 'marriages' as well.

The problem is that for one half of our society, the meaning of the term has changed radically over the past century and for the other half it hasn't changed a wit. As a result, the laws have grown confusing and contradictory and there is no longer any easy way to reconcile the terms.

Word to the wise: The purpose of the "civil rights" movement is to weaken national unity and destroy traditional culture. That has been its purpose since day one, and the actual rights of man per se do not enter into strategic consideration. When the ruling class has to decide between alienating gays, alienating blacks, and alienating hispanics, it will do the first. When this becomes actual policy is difficult to say, since it isn't a straightforward headcount issue.

How did you come to these conclusions?

In only a few years since prop 22, an amazing additional ~5% of voters switched their vote. It's only a matter of time before the amendment is repealed by voters, if the courts do not remove it first!

How is this any different than Connecticut? If the majority of the voting population supported same-sex marriage then it wouldn't have had to be done by the courts.

As bad as prop 8 is, at least it will be overturned in a couple years. Whereas if they hadn't passed the prop to fund a high speed train it could have taken another thirty years. So yeah, the people of California are bigoted, but New England is no better, and in another two years your state is going to have both equal rights and the beginning of a functional mass transit system, so really you're going to be even better off than you were before.

/lives on Cape Cod ... not gay ... not that there's anything wrong with that

Oh well, at least the rest of us will get a little more time.