The institution of marriage in the US is man and woman. Gays need their own institution. People think it is just a game to call gay marriage a gay union but I disagree. Marriage has meaning as it supports a mother and father for the sake of children. I am not okay with allowing marriage to be redefined, but I am okay with allowing gays the same legal rights as married couples, lets just let them have their own institution. Some will try to say this is the same as separate but equal argument during black civil rights, I will say the issue of black civil rights and gay rights are not the same, it is hurtful to blacks to trivialize their struggle, it is not the same.

The fact is, gays that want to be committed in a relationship should have that right, I agree it is a conservative value and many gays are conservative. Gay humans are not defined by their sexuality, no matter how hard the left tries to define people with narrow definitions, lets allow a new institution to start. We have mens and womens bathrooms and nobody in their right mind would compare that to separate but equal, we can now have marriage and along side of that, gay unions.

Basically, what is the proportion of people who break laws versus those people whose personal morality controls their behaviour? What you are proposing is: let's just legalize everything the former want to do.

I'm a heterosexual male, married to a heterosexual women. We have a daughter, a dog, a cat, a small house, some fish. Basically every day, average Americans.

Now suppose I want to be a smart ass.

Suppose my wife and I attend every gay get together in our part of the nation (upstate NY). And further more, suppose when we go, we demand to be called a same sex couple.

Ludicrous, isn't it? I know.

Now suppose some of the people at those parties think we're pretty strange, but don't mind, and humor us. But others won't. They refuse to call us a same sex couple, because, obviously we aren't, we're just demanding people call us a same sex couple.

So what do I do? I get me a lawyer and sue them, I say they are discriminating against us, and trampling on our civil rights! And then we find some nice court that agrees with us. Now where ever we go, everyone we meet has to either call us a same sex couple, or else, I'm dragging their asses back to court and suing the crap out of them.

As I said, it's ludicrous. But that's how I see the issue. It's not about couples, it's not about civil rights, its not about discrimination. it's about the definition of an extremely old concept that western civilization was built on, the nuclear family, and gay marriage proponents, want to use the implied threat of government force to make me change my definition of marriage to suit them.

If all gay marriage proponents wanted was the spirit of marriage, they'd settle for civil unions with the same status as married couples. But they don't want that. It's not enough for them to see themselves as married, the want to force every one else to publicly state they are married. And to me that's an incredibly dangerous prospect. When a handful of appointed judges, sitting behind locked doors, are free to rearrange every American's concepts and definitions, no one and nothing is safe.

I've heard Abe Lincoln was credited with saying, if a dog has four legs and one tail, and you call his tail a leg, does the dog now have five legs?

Some friends of mine from Drama Club at school are doing this play on June 12th and they have invited me to come see them. But the show is the "Larmine Project" which is about Matthew Sheppard and prejudice and hate. Can anybody tell me exactly what this play is and its contents? And should I go see it?

Thank you

Maybe it's because the adrenaline was flowing in which case I get it.

Chaotic freedom is generally preferable to peace through repression. A society or system that cannot stand if it's people are free cannot stand, period.

"And the issue only came up when it seemed that the government was going to seriously put itself on the side of violating religious freedoms in this country"

While allowing that there are some gay marriage proponents who at least in part support it because they see it as a way that THEY can "stick it" to traditional religion (I know I sure do) this has for awhile struck me as a MAJOR reach of an argument. The government doesn't force Churches to perform interfaith weddings or marriages made difficult by prior divorce, so why would or COULD it be able to start now with this? My feeling is that many who have this fear are conflating THEIR "right" to not have people look down on them for speaking negatively about homosexuals with their Church's "right" to follow it's own marriage customs.

Fair enough… though you realize it won't work, right? Introduce it and you'll have THOUSANDS of planning-to-marry 'straight' couples ready to raise hell that they've now lost the "right" to do so because you wanted to "stick it" to the gays. Just sayin, that's how it's going to go down.

(continued)