“How does it translate into usable political information?”
I’m sure it does. But, I wasn’t aware that it had to.
The point is about the limits of state power. If the state can arbitrarily change the definition of marriage to suit today’s fads, it can change the definition of citizen, or ownership, or whatever to something faddish tomorrow.
Consider the ramifications of the state’s redefinition of marriage to include gays, or animals for that matter. The power of the state will be brought to bear to silence all contrary voices, and thoughts, in the name of freedom no less.
As we know from recent events, the people wielding this ideology are not shy about coercing conformity to their orthodoxies. They’re not big on rights of conscience for dissenters to them either.
IMHO, the action to take is scream and protest so loudly about the state’s being beyond its legitimate limits that even the Stalinists in skirts will have to cease and desist.
Governments the world over are infested with these brown shirts. Borrowing a phrase from Louis Brandeis, light is the best disinfectant.
Shine light on them. Expose them. Perhaps the scales will fall off of people’s eyes when they see that the people screaming about rights and justice for gays, and all the sexual innovations of the past fifty years, are nothing more than wolves in sheep’s clothing. That would be a good thing for them to learn regardless of this concrete political outcome.
If you have been reading the thread, a common goal among some posters is to remove licensing from it, and just let everybody make up their own definitions and variations.
The only answer that I see is to put a brake on the weakening of existing law and pass a constitutional amendment.