This debate is being won by the advocates of gay marriage who are smart enough to appeal to the idea that homosexuality is "the way people are" rather than "what people do." I seem to remember a lot of racial predjudice in the 1960's that focused on "what they do", when it came to black people. That may have sparked some of the comparison. Even if there were solid evidence to support homosexuality as solely behavioral, there would still be a lot of support for the rights of gay people to behave as such. After all, religion is not innate, and our society values the toleration of different religious behaviors, even if some, like Wiccanism, or Islam, are very, very different from what most people in our society believe.
While I'm on the subject of religion, you can see in the gay marriage threads an awful lot of denouncement of gay marriage based on religious thought and belief. While I'm happy to say that I have engaged in discussions with a goodly number of people here at FR who have attempted to make points against gay marriage for reasons other than religious or traditional, it seems that those who use theological justifications are the only ones who get quoted in the news media. When GWB talks about using the Constitutional amendment process to "protect the sacrament of marriage," it makes a lot of people wonder why government is in the business of protecting sacraments.
Simply put, there are more people in the mushy middle who fear government being used to impose religious doctrines on people, than fear homosexuality. So far, reciting litanies of diseases has not convinced enough people to put homosexuality back in the closets of decades past.
The comparison, whether fair or not, between racial discrimination and marriage discrimination is being effectively made by those using it. If those who find the comparison unfair and inaccurate wish to win the battle, they'll need to change the messages they've been sending out. There's still a large group in the middle who are uncomfortable with gay marriage, and there is only a short window to convince them that their discomfort is well founded, or they will get over it. My guess is this window will be closed, nailed shut, and painted over by the time that there's a vote in Massachusetts in November, 2006 (at the earliest).
Those who use theological justifications are the only ones who get quoted in the news media. When GWB talks about using the Constitutional amendment process to "protect the sacrament of marriage," it makes a lot of people wonder why government is in the business of protecting sacraments.
You got that right. My take is that that question is emblematic of the cultural divide. As a skeptic, I think of it differently than a sacrament. But how to express that to Americans in general? Only within religious framework has our civilization conceptualized certain basic things, and we do not yet have an equivalent framework that is strictly secular, if such a thing is even possible.