OK, a couple of more words on gay marriage and then I'll call it quits for that topic in this thread.
First, gay people already entitled to be legally and lawfully married. Just not to someone of the same sex. I know you don't see that the way I do, but to me it is in no shape or form a discrimination/civil rights issue. There are plenty of gay people who choose to marry someone of the opposite sex. (Sometimes such marriages are successful and sometimes not, of course.)
The point is that gay people feel that they have the right to be married to whomever they want, even someone of the same sex. My reply to that is that there has NEVER been a right to be married to whomever you want. I cannot marry my sister or mother, for example (even if one or both of us is sterilized so we cannot have kids with birth defects). I cannot marry a second wife, as another example. Maybe you feel that I should be able to do both of those things, but most gay marriage supporters do not.
So if you can't marry just anyone, who should you be able to marry? To me this gets back to the point of marriage in the first place, which is to have a family and provide a secure atmosphere in which to raise the family. That leads to the next point...
"Plumbing differences" are exactly what allows a heterosexual couple to produce a family and prevents a homosexual couple from having one. A heterosexual marriage has the natural expectation that it may produce offspring. Not all do, certainly, but NO homosexual relationship can. And no, I don't buy the argument that my view implies heterosexual couples who can't have kids shouldn't be able to get married. And no, I'm don't think homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children any more than two non-homosexual friends should be allowed to. But I don't especially want to go into either of those views any further right now.
The bottom line is that (as I said previously) there are fundamental differences between heterosexual and homosexual relationships. They are not the same. They shouldn't be called the same. Society has a fundamental need to foster strong families, which I assume is why government got into the marriage business in the first place. But I don't see a reason for society to do anything more for homosexual relationships than to provide a mechanism for a non-marital civil union (which in my view any two people should be able to enter into--such as me and my sister, if we wanted).
And all of that is just as "obvious" to me (and apparently something like 2/3 of the state) as the need for "civil rights" is to you (and the judge who allowed gay marriage). We'll see what the Supreme Court thinks.
