Look at the way mainstream media and society still treats male sexuality as opposed to female sexuality. It has nothing to do with two men, for heaven’s sake people can’t wrap their heads around men being sexual beings without perverting it or looking at men as being offensive. And sadly, many men do fall into this stereotype.

Jim, you seem like a very compassionate and loving man. Introverted like myself, you seem like you’re a good lover that takes his time.

But it’s an issue with many complex threads. Keep doing the good work, I can tell you take your time with this and really believe in doing the right thing.

Ultimately it’s about two human beings making a loving commitment to each other. However, when people see two gay men, that’s not what they think. Yes, there’s some truth to that, it is two men we’re dealing with here, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t behave just as responsible as a healthy straight couple.

Things just aren’t that black and white. And the real bad guys, like to treat everything that black and white.

It seems either we have the ability to veto God (implausible) or, the “magic” of marriage is dependent somehow on everyone knowing and agreeing to what it is. As if to say by changing it, the magic surrounding it would be warped by human acceptance.

I don’t know, seems rather ridiculous to have an omnipotent, omnipresent being who we can negate with something as crude as a pen.

The mistake in thinking is to assume that his thoughts need to be in any way grounded in marriage as a social institution. They are not. If marriage is accepted as a social institution or legal construct, then none of his chain of logic holds water.

But to Itse, and those like him, marriage is not a legal construct or a social institution. It is magic. Literal, supernatural, fantastic magic. To them, marriage is no mere instrument of man, but a spiritual power gifted from God himself. To alter this power in any way strips it of what makes it so special: It’s divine authorship. Without divine backing, the power is lost – like a desicrated alter, it ceases to have it’s magic spiritual powers and becomes merely a contract, no longer capable of intertwineing the souls of those who participate into a unified whole.

Did the rate spike since 1989 or something?

Those people will never be persuaded by arguments presented by gays or anyone perceived as liberal, secular, or insufficiently Christian. Our efforts need to be directed toward people capable of rational thought. I think of it in terms of concentric rings of people. The outer ring can influence the next inner ring and so on, but the outer ring is too far from the innermost rings to have any direct influence.

There seems to be some evidence that the inner rings are feeling threatened. One example is Richard Cizik, who was seemingly forced to resign from the National Association of Evangelicals after his remarks during an interview on NPR radio. When asked about his current view on gay marriage, he replied,

“I’m shifting, I have to admit. In other words, I would willingly say that I believe in civil unions. I don’t officially support redefining marriage from its traditional definition, I don’t think.”

It is people like him who are able to chip away at the extremists on the innermost rings, whereas we cannot.

But we can be influential among people who basically accept the reality of gay people, but may still be struggling with issues such as marriage. And I think it behooves us to present reasons why gay marriage benefits all of society, and not just us.

To them, a fake heterosexual marriage like the one you describe, with one or both partners secretly being homosexual is better than any gay marriage. Someone who is at least putting forth the public appearance of heterosexual normality is at least “trying” to obey “”God’s Will”" no matter how foolish, misguided, or destined for failure such an endeavor is. While they would prefer that there are no homosexual encounters taking place outside the marriage, they’re at least satisfied with deception for the sake of appearance than honest homosexuality.

Or at least it would appear that way IMO.

We all know that large numbers of people, who are substantially homosexually oriented, have been deceiving and marrying opposite sex partners as a path to social acceptability. While I don’t have a link to statistics, the anecdotal evidence is all around me, both in people I know personally, and many others that I hear and read about. While some of these people are now divorced, many (or most?) are still married and secretly engaging in homosexual encounters.

Only someone who is pathologically anti-gay could argue that these deceptive marriages are a benefit to society. Marriage relationships are difficult enough to maintain without starting off by deceiving a partner about something so fundamental as one’s sexual orientation.

The full social acceptance of gays would surely put an end to entering into deceptive marriages, and that would benefit society (including the children who would then be less likely to become victims of broken homes). Initially I would expect to see divorce rates increase as more fake hetero marriages are dissolved, but then the rate should decrease.

So it seems to me that one of the best reasons for society to embrace gay marriage is because it will actually benefit hetero marriage by eliminating the fakers.