Defending marriage as between a man and a woman, and in no way taking away rights from gay people, let them live how they wish, is also critical to Liberty.

What I do not want to do is look back one day and wonder how the teachings of my neighbors became mandatory for my family and kids.

Whether or not a person is "gay" is irrelevant to the man-woman criterion of marriage law. Sexual orientation is not the basis for eligibility nor for ineligibility. So please recheck the facts on that score as well.

I think that just because you claim to be 'straight' does not add nor does it detract from your comment. So please stop posing as if it makes your case for you.

Thanks.

Plus, lets face it, isnt the institution of marriage just another way that religion is still hopelessly bound to government, even though we have freedom of religion? Its rather archaic that we need the government and gods permission to Love - and not just love, we need permission to be able to have the person we love choose when to take us off of life support, or even see us in the hospital, or have rights to taking our own children to and from school.

I am a female getting ready to marry a man. I have known a few gay people, and they are no different than anyone else.
Actually, most of the gay people I have talked to express that one of the most important issues to them is being able to marry because if their lover dies the decisions, Will, Power of Attorney, etc still goes to their next of kin since the government doesnt actually recognize their rights to their lover.

Giving people more rights does not take away from yours.

Also, I saw a comment up there about the backlash people have gotten for voting against Prop 8. I have 2 points to this:
Religious rioters - Its never ok for ANYONE to act this way, but when people feel very strongly about something they tend to over react. Mothers of Sons that died in Iraq have been bombarded by religious protesters at the funerals of their dead sons just because they fought in the war.
California taking it away in the first place - California gave them their right to marriage in the first place. TONS of couples signed up and succeeded or were still in line when they all of a sudden revoked their licenses and didnt return the fee they had to pay for it. Indian Givers?

Anyways - I just wanted to put my piece in. In conclusion - our laws and values are incredibly out dated. You might as well be defending segregation, or denying equal rights among men and women. This is The united states of America, and everyone should be free to live the way that makes them happy, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.

Thank you for being so forthright. As usual, I do have more questions about your post.

You being a biology major and me having been a theology major, no doubt we are going to see things accordingly. Going back to your example, though, if homones may be a predictor of homosexuality, does that mean they are a dictator too? Also, the study says that these androgenic steroids "might" influence adult orientation. That is a rather non-commital answer to whether homosexuality is innate. Furthermore, why does this process take so long to come about-not until adulthood? Why not before then?

Now to your statement, "For whatever reason, were here, were queer." That brings up a whole host of questions, but I will leave it at just two. What is the purpose of your homosexuality? Is it just so you can have companionship, someone to "love," or does it serve a "greater good?"

As to the vehicle analogy, by "owner" I didn't mean God (although He does own all of creation). Owner is the person (male or female) that accessorizes vehicle (themselves, in this instance). You are the owner of yourself, right? Then, do you not make a conscious decision to accessorize yourself as you see fit that goes beyond chemical composition, hormones, and perhaps even DNA (genetics)? In other words, are we not more than the sum of our parts?

Finally, the comment about reality as paraphrased by you of the noted astrophysicist, Neil Degrasse Tyson, if reality (based on our senses) is little more than opionion, then how do we know anything as real? What qualifies as real or how do you quanitfy it then?

Sex differentiation is a fact -- according to SSM argumentation's own emphasis on sexual orientation.

It is an undisputed fact that marriage defenders acknowledge.

The unity of the sexes is of great societal significance. As is provison for responsible procreation.

Can the same really be said of government validation of sexualized one-sexed arrangements? If so, then, what is the societal significance?

And please explain how it rises to the height that would require society to discard the core of marriage so as to equate the social institution of marriage with the highly abstract government vehicle of SSM.

If SSM has merit then it ought to stand on its own two feet rather than be foisted onto the back of marriage for a free ride.

As Mr. George noted, SSMers need to question their assumptions. Question the assumption that SSM is the same as marriage. It is distinguishable from marriage in the most obvious ways. And sex differentiation is more than a huge clue.

Just state what makes SSM, SSM. If it is not homosexuality, then, it must be something else, right? And whatever that is, it cannot be the denial of sex differentation which is an undisputed fact on both sides of the SSM issue.

If you don't think that the societal significance of SSM is the validation of homosexuality, then, you need to stop comparing "gays" and "straights" and just plainly state the significance of SSM on its own merits -- its own independant claim to high societal regard.

You want to talk about love? Well, as I said earlier: "If the source is actually sentiment rather than something else, then, okay, let’s discuss that honestly."

By the way, marriage is not about your private purpose. It is about the core purposes. This does not fit SSM. Indeed, love or no love, SSM is antithetical to what marriage actually means. While love certainly can and usually does enter into one's personal experience of marriage, it is not the purpose of the social institution of marriage to validate the private sentiments of this or that person. Marriage is not a purely private thing. It means much more than what you have described. Far more. But it is this extra baggage that you would have society throw overboard.

If SSM is defined by same-sex sexual love, rather than some other type of same-sex love, then please elaborate.

If it is defined by a sex-neutral love, for instance, then, the current lines drawn around the core of marriage would become unsustainable if SSM was merged with marital status. You'd destroy the essentials -- at least in the marriage law -- that provide the basis for the lines drawn against some married people (but not all married people), against some related people (but not all related people), against some underqaged people (but not all underaged people), that is to say -- against some consenting adults but not all consenting adults.

What is the love requirement going to look like -- or is that not really what SSM is about, at law?

The first is about what marriage actually is. For SSMers, marriage means less and less. That, I think, is because SSM itself means so little in a societal sense. So SSMers seek to make marriage indistinguishable from SSM and thus destroy the recognition of what makes marriage, marriage.

The debate about this question is about the justification (or rather the lack of justification) for such an attack on a foundational social institution of civil society. SSMers generally come up very short on this question.

The other question is about human sexuality. This is the forte of most SSMers whose argumentation is highly dependant on identity politics of the gaycentric variety. The SSM goal is to provoke a reaction from marriage defenders such that this question overshadows the marriage question.

Well, when the SSM campaign is confronted frankly about this second question, SSMers tend to try to squirm away from it and to pretend that it is the defenders of marriage who emphasize sexual orientation. The two questions are not the same thing. But SSMers seek to impose a cultural change through legal change -- and the change they seek is on this second question. Marriage is just a political vehicle, in terms of gay identity politics. SSMers cannot even define SSM much less define marriage. They can't say what makes SSM, SSM, just as they fall short on the question about what makes marriage, marriage. But their forte surely is all things homosexual.

And since their politics is defintively based on The Group identity, and since the marriage question is viewed through the lense of identity politics, the SSM campaign fears a national campaign, such as the one that NOM has now engaged, that deals with both questions forthrightly.

If SSM is not about sex, then, it is about nothing.

It is, however, about identity politics, and the SSM campaign seeks to impose supremacy on that basis.

So, Leah, in terms of your remark to John, the SSMer has far more in common with the people who imposed racialist identity politics in the anti-miscegenation system. That may make you feel uncomfortable. You seek to use marriage, not to enter marriage, and you do so in the name of group identity.

Marriage is open to men and women alike. The marriage law has never had eligibility based on sexual orientation -- nor ineligibility. It is only through the prism of gay identity politics that someone might percieve (wrongly) that marriage excludes on that basis.

What is really at stake is the question about marriage. SSMers choose to turn this into a question about homosexuality. Well, the racialists had used marriage to turn the first question into a question about dividing humankind into subspecies based on false notions of race identity. That was repudiated long ago. SSMers have not found a better argument to overcome that repudiation.

What is the core meaning of the type of relationship you have in mind when you refer to SSM? Is is sexless? Is it not definitively sexual?

If none of that is essential, and it appears to be so in terms of the lack of legal requirements making it essential, then, you will have great difficulty accounting for the pro-SSM complaint's emphasis on sexual orientation. And you would not distinguish SSM from the rest of the nonmarital category of arrangements and relationships.

Read Mr. George's interview where he discussed this very thing.

Why did you refer to "gays" and "straights" if you believe that SSM is not about sex?

You pointed to "legal benefits" but marriage is not one and the same as "legal benefits".

You did demonstrate that you see this SSM issue as centrally about identity politics: "these legal benefits can not be given to one group of people and not another."

The Constitution does not provide group rights. It provides, as does the fundamental concept of liberty itself, individualized rights. Yet here you are emphasizing group identity politics.

If SSM is not about sex, contrary to the various pro-SSM court opinions (both those in the majority and those in the minority in SSM cases), and is only about "legal benefits", then, please respond to the question:

"If it [the societal significance, if any, of the SSM idea] is not about same-sex sexual attraction/ behavior/ romance — if it is not about sex, then, what is it really about? Please try to explain without disparaging the core meaning of the social institution of marriage."

Afterall, in California the state's legal benefits were available to one-sexed arrangements that registered with the government. But apparently that was not what the SSM campaign was really about.

I did a smaller scale study in high school with pals and found that the lesbian identified females had a longer ring finger. My own finger ratio is 97 when the usual for females is 1 to 1 or 100.
Does this make me, or any other homosexual any less male or female? I don't think so. I'm still biologically and mentally female. Homosexuality and transgender/transsexuality are not one and the same.
So going back to analogy (using the Williams et al theory), the vehicle does not realize it is different but it functions just like all the other vehicles. The "owner," which I would call the mother but you may believe is God, doesn't make a conscious decision to release certain hormones in the womb.

Oh, and going back to your first question, we may never know what reality is. To paraphrase astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, when we rely on our senses we are really relying on opinion. Our five senses and our thoughts are controlled by genetic predisposition (for example liking cilantro or being pitch perfect).

Although I understand what you said, I am not here to placate anyone. I am, however, trying to be reasonable and sensitive to the discussion, yet stay true to my convictions.

As to the rest of your post, I do have some questions. With one Maker/Creator (God) and two models, male and female, is that not enough differentiation for you? Are you saying then that being homosexual entails something altogether different than being male or female? Is being homosexual, then, an amalgam of the two genders? If that is true, why so few copies and who was the original?

Finally, from what you said, each and every one of us has to find our "own way." What is our guiding "light" if left on our own to find the "right" path that leads to happiness? If it is different for everyone, then how is it that many people end up on the same path?