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[quote=Anonymous][quote=takoma]Alright, I ran an idea up the flagpole (using my iPad, on which I don't happen to be signed in), and obviously nobody saluted.  I'm no Catholic, but a liberal atheist who totally disagrees with Davis's actions.  But I would like to see us moving together rather than apart, so I was hoping for a way to allow the two sides of the issue to live without rancor.

It seems absolutely obvious to me that there are two different ideas of marriage, and I naively thought that my little idea was an easy way to recognize that.  But it seems to have accomplished nothing other than getting me into a fight with those on my side of the issue.

The road to hell is so easy to find![/quote]

Poe's Law bites hard sometimes, even when you have good intentions.

The problem is that while conservatives who oppose gay marriage can say, "I don't like it!" they can't articulate any reason other than that (or, it's against God's will!) as reasons why it shouldn't be permitted. Although the opponents of gay marriage claim that permitting gay marriage somehow denigrates heterosexual marriages, none can provide any explanation of how that could happen or what the effect would be.

For any "reason" I've heard other than that to oppose gay marriage (e.g., can't produce kids, body parts aren't aligned, etc.), I can cite examples of heterosexual couples who would fit those criteria and who would be permitted to be married, so those arguments fail. Judge Posner did a fabulous dissection of these sham arguments in oral argument for the Wisconsin and Indiana gay marriage laws, and his written opinion on the topic is fabulous reading.

The Biblical reason fails the 1st Amendment test. The gov't can't prohibit marriage between two people based on reasons articulated by a subset of the adherents to a particular religion.

If, long ago, we hadn't connected the religious ceremony with the civil ceremony, and had created a secular "civil union" for everyone, and an additional category of "marriage" for those who went to a church, that would be one thing. If we had done that, all of our laws would be written in terms of the civil union structure. But that horse left the barn a loooong time ago.

So, we're stuck with the same word, marriage, meaning the relationship entity that is the outcome of both the secular ceremony and the religious one.

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