I'm curious about the method by which one determines when a social view is "incorrect." Take a survey?
What if I think that marriage should be defined religiously by a religious institution rather than legally by the state? I guess I am "incorrect" for not supporting state-recognized gay marriage. But how was I supposed to determine this before you came along to tell me?
Were bans on interracial marriage incorrect? Was slavery incorrect? I'm not saying bans on gay marriage are as bad as slavery, obviously, but rather that there are certain issues which over the course of history will become generally accepted social truth. That is, of course, the only sort of "correctness" that is possible on a social issue.
Marriage, in the legal sense, just a particular type of contract, long recognized because of how commonly people wanted to enter into a particular type of economic arrangement. It is non-sensical to think religious institutions should have any say in defining this type of contract, any more than they have a say in defining the contracts that pertain to, say, residential leases. Should religious institutions be able to use Biblical scripture to argue that implied in any residential lease is a warranty that the landlord will have running water, etc? Of course not, that is the exclusive domain of the secular courts. The marriage contract, being no different, should be treated no differently.
I'm not sure how your first paragraph differs from saying that some social consensus, at some point in time, constitutes ethics, for no other reason than that consensus.
>how was I supposed to determine this before you came along to tell me?
You hear other people's opinions and you make up your mind. It's painfully obvious that there isn't an objective repository for this sort of thing; the whole notion of 'inalienable rights" is rather recent and fluffy to begin with.
>What if I think that marriage should be defined religiously by a religious institution rather than legally by the state?
Yet we live in a society where marriage is legally defined. It's fine to work against abolishing the institution of marriage, but if that's the case witholding that legal definition from an arbitrary segment of the population becomes a petty argument over semantics.
Equal protection and treatment by one's government is so widely accepted (in theory) that it's a part of the U.S. Constitution[1]. It also doesn't conflict with your position.
[1] Granted, the Civil War Amendments were imposed under martial law, but calls for the repeal of the 14th Amendment are rare.
What if I think that marriage should be defined religiously by a religious institution rather than legally by the state? I guess I am "incorrect" for not supporting state-recognized gay marriage. But how was I supposed to determine this before you came along to tell me?