So how does the federal government handle the case of allocating benefits for SS and Medicare including spousal and survivor benefits? Or federal pension benefits? Or joint tax returns?
I can see this opening up widespread fraud. There is a lot of money involved in all of this.
Government does have a role to play in defining marriage. We already have laws on what age you should be, polygamy, incest, etc. So where do you draw the line on how much government should "get the heck out of marriage altogether? When a 50 year old man marries a 9 year old boy? Or three people get married? How do we revise our tax and divorce laws to reflect no government involvement?
I don't see that as a government problem, it's a state problem. For example, if the government outlaws the use of marijuana and you go ahead and use it, you can obtain every benefit your state allows. But, under federal law, if you violate that law, you can't ask the government to protect you since you knowingly are violating federal law.
I think this whole gay issue is the same. If a state says that you can legally marry your same-sex partner, that's within the authority of that state to do so. But that state authority doesn't necessarily place any burden on the federal government UNLESS the federal government is willing to allow those states to include federal benefits among the same-sex marriage.
As far as I am concerned, marriage remains a state between John and Mary, NOT John and Larry or Joan and Mary. This whole issue affects ~3% - 4% of the population and doesn't deserve all this media hand-wringing. We don't see anything like this when it concerns conservative issues or Constitutional rights (such as the Second Amendment that the left anbhors!), so why are we wasting so much oxygen to appease a clear minority or the population!?? It doesn't make sense. Tell'em to go back in the closet, I'm tired of them being in my face nd in my business.