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Originally Posted by Centralist";p="
Marriage is between a man and woman.
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On what do you base that? Why should your basis for that statement be made into law?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Centralist";p="
But we must not thow away the things which make us a society to begin with such as "marriage".
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First, no one wants to destroy heterosexual marriage, so nothing would be "thrown away" if gay marriage were legalized. There would be a different definition, but it would still include heterosexual couples. Second, you are no doubt thinking of the purpose of marriage. Asking what the government's policy on the purpose of marriage should be is asking the wrong question. Why should the government define marriage when no one's rights are infringed upon?
Even if you think that homosexuality is immoral, I assure you that many heterosexual unions are entered for all of the wrong reasons, but it certainly isn't the government's place to forbid marriages between shallow people (with the government defining the "proper" reasons for marriage). Churches may choose to recognize or not to recognize gay couples, but the government has no ethical right to recognize some marriages but not others so long as all concerned are consenting adults. I make a caveat for incestuous marriages because of the harm done to children conceived through incest. Other than that, though, please explain why marriage is the government's business in the first place.
Now granted, until and unless homosexuality can be proven to be inborn, gay rights issues are states' rights (10th Amendment) issues, but on a state level I support getting the government out of marriage in nearly all circumstances. I think that sexual orientation is inborn. I know that I could not be attracted to a man, so I doubt that a gay man could be attracted to a woman. If and when science establishes what most of us already know- i.e. that sexual orientation is inborn- gay rights will become, on a Constitutional level, a 14th Amendment matter of equality, thus making un-Constitutional any inferior legal status for homosexuals. Until then, I reluctantly leave the issue to the states despite the frequent decisions of voters to ban gay marriage state-by-state.