[jwalsh07]

There is no Constitutional right for men to marry men or for women to marry women just like there is no Constitutional right to abortion.

There is no violation of the Equal Protection Clause because every American is entitled to be married as long as they marry a member of the opposite sex who doesn't happen to be their sister or 4 years old.

This is a tenth amendment issue that should be the province of the states. There is no inalienable right to marriage.

[kcar]

I wasn't arguing that there is a constitutional agrument for this new development, only that in interpreting the spirit of the constitution in new developments the accent should be on personal freedom, not on theology. Pragmatics would lead to the notion that even if rules re: sodomy and oral sex are illegal, they cannot be enforced. So if relationships develop of in the shadowed sphere which raise complex issues as to who is due what for what reason, a pragmatic regard for maintaining the peace with an accent for personal freedom would behoove us to consider a marriage-lite legal arrangement between consenting sexual aberrants that grants them all rights of marriage except for legal adoption.

Real marriage, in social not legal terms, is in fact a committment between man and women that is biologically significant in that the rearing of offspring becomes the overriding obligation of the union. This can not be cheapened because of a marriage-lite provision for the sexually aberrant, nor is the development of a new form of legal union a necessary threat to the preexisting form more legitimately granted.
It doesn't hurt us to allow it, and it simplifies matters, why not let it be done?