[hunter112]

That's quite an analysis, but it's bound to be lost on people who really don't take religion all that seriously. That not only includes agnostics such as myself, but nominally religious people who consider much of the Bible, especially the Old Testament writings, to be allegory, or legend. What I've asked for in my posts on these topics is for someone to explain just how the existence of the kind of marriage YOU wouldn't have (be it homosexual, or just a quickie Vegas drive-thru) devalues the marriage that YOU would have with your spouse, especially if you consider it to be a three way partnership including your God.

I've not really gotten a solid answer. Right now, the voters are plenty uneasy with the concept of same sex marriage, and even in the most liberal states, constitutional amendments aimed at preventing gay marriage have carried the day, but I really don't see that continuing on for the long term. About all the opponents of same sex marriage can do is to quickly get constitutional amendments in the states where they can (I really don't think it will happen on a national level), making it difficult to remove them when simple majorities decide they're over their squeamishness over this issue. UNLESS, there is a reason beyond religion or tradition that arises to take the place of that skittishness, that's the way I see things developing on this issue in the future.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

What I've asked for in my posts on these topics is for someone to explain just how the existence of the kind of marriage YOU wouldn't have... devalues the marriage that YOU would have with your spouse, especially if you consider it to be a three way partnership including your God.

An atheist like myself doesn't see that as a valid question... There is an axiomatic state of human reproductive biology and anything beyond that is purely a fetish, something the state should have no interest in sanctioning as codified into secular law.

No man may become a law unto himself under the guise of freedom of religion.

Some of these liberal-tarians forget, it is THEY who advocate “separation of church and state.” Let me cram it right back down their throats...

It was landmark U.S. Supreme Court precedent Reynolds v. United States in 1878 that made “separation of church and state” a dubiously legitimate point of case law, but more importantly; it confirmed the Constitutionality in statutory regulation of marriage practices.

[unspun]

I suggest you study the subject of "natural law." Not how the left misconstrues this now, but what it meant in the Seventeenth Century and onwards.

Marriage is between a husband and a wife because marriage is marriage.

[unspun]

Marriage is between a husband and a wife because marriage is marriage.

The union of a man and woman in a lifetime commitment in which children may be raised is what is called marriage.

If I were homosexual, I could take up with another man. If I had a thing for trees, I could drill a hole in one and hold a ceremony of lifetime commitment. But in neither case, would it be a marriage.

A bean is a bean. I could say, "I like to eat peas, not beans," but that doesn't change the fact that only a bean is a bean.