[Theosis]

Forcing a redefinition is nowhere similar to killing one single person, let alone thousands.

Then why did America bother going to war in Afganistan or Iraq? Given America's current technological capabilities and her ability to keep these folks out of the country in the future, why risk more American lives and those of Afgani and Iraqi civillians? Are freedom and democracy worth the cost of human life?

Basically, as much as you are trying to reduce this to simply a consenting relationship between two adults, this isn't the issue. Otherwise, homosexuals would simply engage in these types of relationships without insisting that it be called marriage? Why not call it something else like they do in Vermont? Thus what is at issue here, and what you don't seem to want to address, is a historical and universal convention supported by the majority of a nation's citizens being overturned by judicial fiat through the political maneuvering of a tiny minority of activists intended to circumvent the democratic process. Nations survive the death of individuals, no matter how great the tragedy; however, they seldom survive the betrayal from within of their system of government without great loss of life.

[gcruse]

No, what's at issue here is the social conservative's alarm at the failure of state power to dictate the private lives of consenting adults. Raising the clamor to the level of national disaster just indicates how embedded the desire to control others is in 'freedom' loving conservatism.