Government has a responsibility to recognize and protect institutions which it does not create, George Weigel argues, otherwise it oversteps its bounds and acts in a totalitarian manner:

"...a state that asserts the authority to redefine marriage has stepped beyond the boundaries of its competence. And if that boundary-crossing is set in constitutional or legal concrete, it opens up a Pandora’s box of undesirable results. For if the state can decree that two men or two women can make a marriage, why not one man and two women? Two women and two men? These are not paranoid fantasies; the case for polyandry and polygamy is now being mounted in prestigious law journals.

And if the state can define marriage by diktat, why not other basic human relationships, like the parent-child relationship, the doctor-patient relationship, the lawyer-client relationship, or the priest-penitent relationship? There is no principled reason why not. Thus gay marriage is another expression of that soft totalitarianism that Benedict XVI aptly calls the “dictatorship of relativism.”

Conscientious voters will keep this—and the Democratic Party platform’s endorsement of gay marriage—in mind on Nov. 6." -- First Things