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And on THIS particular issue of gay m@rri@ge I also respectfully beg to differ with those who I MOSTLY agree with.

I am a very pro-life conservative stay-at-home Mom. I used to be against gay marriage. I certainly am against the fiat and tyranny of the Men in Black. I despise the "liberal gay agenda."

Yet I have changed my opinion on gay marriage or at least legal secular partnership with all rights of marriage. I have come to think that conservative gays (of whom I know a few) should be allowed to support and be a part of conservative family life. Monogamy is good, and I'd like to see less promiscuity among both gays and straights. Sex is so cheapened by what's out there on TV every day, and in public. Straights are pretty raunchy themselves, these days. I welcome anyone who wants to live a committed, conservative, family-oriented life.

I am therefore not of one mind with 99.9% of Freepers on this subject, either.

Well, you are on the opposite side from me for good reasons, but the problem is that the things you are expecting from homosexual marriage will not materialize. We know this because they haven't materialized in other countries.

Let's say though that they would: Is less promiscuity among homosexuals worth the effect on heterosexual families (see below)? Is that (or being "part of conservative family life") worth the degradation of basic freedoms that has followed in Sweden and Canada?

Check these out. Like I said, they deal with the experience other countries have had with these policies, and they have been a disaster, and I can't think of any definition of diminishment" that wouldn't apply to what these policies have done to hetero marriage in those countries.

Results of gay marriage in Scandinavia.

Results of gay marriage in Holland

Where it will lead sociologically.

More on Holland (and why contraception, secularization, etc. aren't the reason for the European problems)

Let's be nice, live-and-let-live libertarian types, just like in Canada.
(In Sweden and Canada gay activists got parts of the Bible made "illegal." Do we want to encourage them in the USA?)

Why libertarians should stand up against gay marriage.

Anything else is covered here.

The problem with gay marriage is two fold. It perpetuates harmful ideas of the purposes of civil marriage. and harmful ideas of limited government. I quote Blackstone:

The duty of parents to provide for the maintenance of their children is a principle of natural law; an obligation, says Puffendorf, laid on them not only by nature herself, but by their own proper act, in bringing them into the world: for they would be in the highest manner injurious to the issue, if they only gave the children life, that they might afterwords see them perish. By begetting them therefore they have entered into a voluntary obligation, to endeavour, as far as in them lies, that the life which they have bestowed shall be supported and preserved. And thus the children will have a perfect right of receiving maintenance from their parents. And the president Montisqueiu has very just observation upon this head: That the establishment of marriage in all civilized states is built on this natural obligation of the father to provide for his children; for that ascertains and makes known the person who is bound to fulfill this obligation: whereas, in promiscuous and illicit conjunctions, the father is unknown; and the mother finds a thousand obstacles in her way; - - - shame, remorse, the constraint of her sex, and the rigor of laws; --- that stifle her inclination to perform this duty: and besides, the generally wants ability.

Since California's "Family Law act of 1969" (No-fault divorce) obligations to children is no longer the principle underlying civil marriage. Romantic feelings have supplanted parental obligation. The harm this has caused is immeasurable. Millions of children without fathers. Thousands of children from broken homes committing countless crimes.

Gay marriage is also an assault on limited government. The state is involved in heterosexual marriage because governments are instituted among men to secure inalienable rights and children must be cared for. Marriage is the institution that covers this requirement. The state has no reason to be involved in the relationship between to men. They are free to enter into any contracts they wish. They cannot however beget children therefor that state should not be involve.