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The ACTUAL purpose of the Amendment is to block gays from accessing most of the 1,138 legal rights enjoyed by married couples as well as by any two people of opposite genders who shack up with each other and present themselves in public as if they were married. Granted, 74 of those rights can be currently obtained by filing dozens of legal documents (a process costing thousands of dollars in legal fees), but even then the protections those legal agreements provide are not nearly as firm as the marriage rights that they are intended to mirror. This Amendment would wipe out many of those legal arrangements (except for the few specific ones listed in Section 2 of the Amendment ... and even, then, there's no guarantee that the way Section 2 is written will enable those to stand). This is the Amendment's real purpose.

Your premise is severely flawed or your sarcasm tag is missing. The sexual activities that people choose to participate and partners they choose to engage in such activities with do not merit privilege or special status equal to that reserved for marriage alone -period...

As far as shacking up -I assume you refer to common law marriage in Texas -if such, there is a little more required than "shacking up" to 'get' the marital benefits you enumerate numerically...

The sexual activities that people choose to participate and partners they choose to engage in such activities with do not merit privilege or special status equal to that reserved for marriage alone -period...

You would appear to be assuming that my statement was, in some way, pro homosexual marriage/unions. It was not; it was simply a statement of FACT. The Amendment's actual purpose is to ensure that homosexuals will no longer be able to access, through means other than marriage or marriage-like legal constructions, rights which have been historically reserved for the institution of marriage. I in no way stated that they should have a "right" to try and access those rights through marriage or marriage-like legal constructions. The Amendment's intention simply attempts to block homosexuals from obtaining such rights. To accomplish that, it should have been better-written to avoid the 14th Amendment kicking in. Do I think the 14th Amendment SHOULD kick in? No. But will it? Yes. The Amendment could have been easily written so-as to block ANYONE (gay, pink, or Martian) from accessing such rights outside the institution of marriage. Look at your above statement: if those rights are truly "reserved for marriage alone - Period" then that is how they should be accessed, PERIOD. The Amendment should have been written to do THAT - Period. Section 1 does that, and does it quite well. Section 2, however, opens the entire Amendment to attack on 14th Amendment grounds due to sloppy writing.

As far as shacking up -I assume you refer to common law marriage in Texas -if such, there is a little more required than "shacking up" to 'get' the marital benefits you enumerate numerically...

A tiny bit more, yes. Under § 1.91 of the Texas Family Code, an informal marriage can be established either by declaration (registering at the county courthouse without having a ceremony), or by meeting a 3-prong test showing evidence of (1) an agreement to be married, (2) cohabitation in Texas, and (3) representation to others that the parties are married. The term "shacking up" was intended to reflect my disapproval of the practice.