Here is a 1996 article by Larry Tribe I just turned up. I did not realize that the Defense of Marriage Act was a hot button issue back then as well.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/scotts/ftp/wpaf2mc/NYTtribe.html One certainly cannot accuse Tribe of being a conservative, so it's fair to say that his arguments track the liberal party line. He agrees with me about Full Faith and Credit, which you are welcome to find unconvincing.
It won't come as any surprise to the Greek Chorus on the thread, but my caseload is majority divorces (then bankruptcies). Further, I have zero problem with homosexuality between consenting adults. Surprise, surprise.
As a result of both having gay friends and handling divorces, I doubt very much that the vast majority of gay men would actually commit to the strictures of heterosexual marriage. I don't know any heterosexual man who would willingly pay spousal support. I find it ludicrous to contemplate that a gay man would do so.
Men are men. They don't want to give up their money, or their toys, or their autonomy.
If gay men knew that they'd have to give half of everything they own to their partners in the event of divorce NO FAULT, would they do so? My guess is no.
The only real agenda which is driving gay "marriage" is HIV/AIDS and health care coverage for same.
Would the world come to an end if a nice, domesticated gay man wanted to marry another nice, domesticated gay man so his partner could have the benefits of marriage? I think not.
My beloved grandmother willingly rented her rental home to a nice gay couple in Biloxi, Mississippi, almost 40 years ago. One worked for the US Air Force at Keesler, the other was (stereotype alert) a hairdresser, who was a dear at advising me on how to do my nails and hair.
She didn't care whether they were black, white, pink, green, purple or polka-dotted, only whether they were decent human beings.
I strive to live my life according to her principles.
Tribe's article (good find, by the way) says this: "... for the Constitution delegates to the United States no power to create categorical exceptions to the Full Faith and Credit Clause." I find it disturbing to agree with Tribe on anything, but I think he's got that right. That is, being married in one state means being married in all (just as a Reno divorce was a divorce in all states). Anyway, we can't decide this issue here. It will have to play itself out in realtime, first with a state legalizing gay marriage, then with another state refusing to recognize it, then into the courts and up the chain of appeals. I predict that Dred Scott will be cited in the final decision, as loathesome as it may be to invoke it, but it's good authority for the nation-wide recognition of an unpopular status created in one state.
This subject is off-topic for this thread, so I suggest we let it drop. There must be gay marriage threads where this issue can play out in all its glory, and such would be the appropraite forum to continue this conversation. (Actually, I don't care about the issue all that much, and I probably wouldn't participate in such a thread.)