1.) The State did not “get involved with marriage to make a buck.” The State was there first. Marriage pre-dates the very idea that Curch and State are seperate entities, which is why (in most places) clergy perform a ceremony licensed by the State.

2.) Marriage is not a partnership for the enjoyment of the parties, but a corporation for the production and raising of productive citizens. That is, those who don’t need financial support and don’t suck up resources via the justice system.

3.) Civil Unions are actually the worst possible answer, giving all the legal advantages of married life without and of the religious baggage. Mr. Newby explained the results of that.

4.) Even in states where it is not officially sanctioned, numerous churches are willing to wed gay couples, giving them the forma and a nice piece of paper to show their friends.

What we are looking at here, really, is the abolition of marriage as such, and it’s replacement with limited duration domestic partnership contracts. Offsprig will be a clause.

If everyone gets an advantage, it’s not an advantage. The more people who get an advantage, the less it’s an advantage. No group that gets an advantage wants to see it diluted.

You really couldn’t figure this out? You never saw interest-group politics before?

Yes, this can be alleviated by a medical Power of Attorney, but I read somewhere that (forget where/when) that those are not required to be honored.

What I don’t understand is why they can’t just have a civil union. Why does it have to be called a “marriage?”

What’s the distinction between the two?

To put a simple lifestyle choice on the same footing, with the same subsidies and benefits, is corrosive to those interests. It must either take money away from other needs, or the taxpayer must be held up at gunpoint for more money, while at the same time trivializing the real purpose of the laws. Proponents of government-subsidized homosexuality cannot plausibly pretend surprise that taxpayers might object to money being frittered away for their private gratification.

In any event, the ostensible reasons in support of gay marriage are probably a smokescreen. I do not mind if San Francisco and its provinces legalize gay marriage. However their experiment works out, we will all learn valuable lessons in due course, and any people harmed can simply drive over to Sacramento and harass the legislature into making some changes. The real reason gay marriage is being popularized is to set the stage for it being litigated in the Supreme Court, so that one more aspect of American life can be regimented in a single winner-takes-all contest. The statists want to bring to family law what they brought to drug law and race relations. The prospect of child custody cases being decided by a National Family Law Administration is chilling.