[alancarp]

Everyone is already treated equally under current marriage laws. Any eligible man can marry any eligible woman. We’re all limited to one partner at a time. We all are limited to an opposite sex partner. The fact that a homosexual man doesn’t want to marry a woman doesn’t negate the fact that he has the same right to do so as anyone.

That is exactly the problem: we have reached the point at which the equal protection argument is tearing up ALL of the limits you mention. Yes, gays have the right to marry the opposite gender, but they don't want to do so. Yet they want the financial and legal benefits of marriage, so they have now successfully argued that the 14th amendment should protect that option on an equal basis of opposite-gender marriages. They have worked around the protected class argument and gone for a straight 14th amendment victory.

So my point is that we have lost this argument and must therefore develop another approach (previously outlined). Your points seem to be exactly what was lost in this California decision. Common (gender) sense and tradition have no rational legal standing any more. Religious practice was ceded once the government and states got involved in licensing marriage. Once this hits SCOTUS (and wins), I expect that the only limits left regarding marriage will be that of 'consenting humans of age'... two or more.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I think you are right about “consenting humans, two or more”. The same arguments being made in favor of same-sex marriage can and will be made in favor of polygamy or group marriage.

Already some talk about “triads” or “polyamory”, in which groups of people live together. I’m “libertarian” enough to say let people live how they want, but, just because consenting adults live a certain way, doesn’t mean that our social policies need to approve of or give legal status to how they live their lives.