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What gives them the right to say to the couple who has been married for fifty years and which has five children and six grandchildren that, “you are no different than John and Jack who met one hot and noisy night in Stanley Park”?

They're not saying that. They're saying that Joe and Mary who met one hot and noisy night in a sleazy straight pick-up bar are no different than John and Jack who met one hot and noisy night in Stanley Park, and that as long as the government is registering marriages between the former, there's no legitimate reason not to register marriages between the latter. The real question is why any government is registering any of these relationships, or any of the ones between civilized people either.

First, this is a very cynical look at marriage. I am willing to bet that if we could poll all married couples in the US, we would find that very few met in a pick-up bar, especially ones that were sleazy (I'll accept hot and noisy). Homosexuals, however, have all of these wonderful meeting places that heterosexuals don't have, such as bath-houses, highway rest stops, and restroom glory holes. Some might meet in a fairly respectable way (if there is such a thing for homosexuals) but they are notorious for meeting in ways that are not pretty. That was the authors point. To suggest that the average hetero couple is equally as deviant is an inaccurate view to say the least.

Second, state laws exist regarding various things, such as inheritance. If there were no registration of a legal spouse, then all of the pre-assumed legal priveleges of a spouse that we have now would not exist, and thus when someone died it would be a big legal mess every time to determine who gets what afterward, not to mention the messes that would occur if a spouse were in a coma and someone were needed to decide whether a certain surgery were authorized. A legal marriage makes all of that easier (usually). Now, you could still argue that it is unnecessary if you really want to, depending on how hard core you are, but my point is that legal marriages do have a purpose.

Now that legal marriage does exist, there are a number of reasons why its definition should be limited to a union between a man and a woman. The foremost reason is that marriage has existed long before any of the governments that exist today and, if you're Judeo-Christian, it is a sacred covenant. Legal marriage arose out of the recognition of the institution of marriage and not the other way around. There is no basis in hman tradition for a recognition of marriage between homosexuals. Perhaps more importantly, though, is the Santorum question: where do we draw the line? If we say that it is not the government's business to define marriage, then will we allow marriage between siblings? between parents and children? between humans and animals? We must draw the line somewhere, and I think it is fairly obvious that we should draw the line at the point where we begin to legally endorse deviant behaviour.