But isn't it equally dangerous to contrive "rights" in order to secure privileges and remuneration from the state? Where does it end? The implications of an unending progression of new "rights" being defined is a threat to individual sovereignty when the new rights become entitlements, and entitlements confer moral or financial capital. When these entitlements incur unapproved blessing and financial support from the majority of citizens, you have a kind of breakdown in confidence in the legal system.
Basically you're using a positivist argument: the minority who believes they have a right to secure marriage from the state, if they are able to persuade the sovereign (the judiciary) that their cause has arbitrary merit, they may impose their views on the majority who disagree. How is this fair to the majority?
I think when we're asked by secular humanists, ever desiring to enhance the human race, ever explaining how things can get "better and better" as we cast aside this or that old-fashioned attitude, it's very instructive to point out that there is absolutely no evolutionary value in supporting same-sex couples in their bid to start family units. In other words, I'm willing to take a positivist approach most days, so long as the "sovereign of the social contract" upholds individual rights as defined by Locke and our Declaration of Independence, as well as our bill of rights. However, when the march of new rights begins to violate the consent of the governed, I am very comfortable falling back on the laws of nature directly.
Is this dangerous to talk about higher authorities, above the branches of government? Yes, but it is also dangerous to conduct government business as a "sovereign" when the people clearly disagree. Government officials who violated the consent of the governed in our nation's founding history found themselves tarred and feathered. You bet it's dangerous to talk up natural laws, but when they are so clearly and unmitigatedly violated, one can make a clear case that the positivist legal sovereignty violating it has lost its authority.
I at least am unwilling to stay silent and simply watch the judiciary run roughshod over the will of the people -- especially when natural law supports my case so clearly. Families are from men and women, not from the law benches of our country.
I think the same-sexers should be very concerned about where they are pushing our legal system. A day may come when the majority of Americans loses faith in the judiciary because it is incapable of representing their natural view of the world. And for what? A tax refund? A piece of paper? Is it really worth it?
I don't think you read my post very closely. I think legislatures should make laws, not the judiciary.
If the public square thought it was a mere piece of paper, the passions evoked on this issue seem very odd indeed. It is more than a piece of paper, much more. It is about recognition in the public square that vows of intimacy among consenting two adults should be given repect even if of the same sex.