None of the State’s interests you cited are inhibited when 3 men marry as opposed to 2. So when you’re honest enough to argue BY THE SAME TOKEN (equality) how can you oppose 3?

“I’m sorry that they are afraid that we will treat them as badly as they have treated us for decades.”

Millennia. or at least millenium plus centuries.

“If same-sex marriage becomes a cultural norm, Mr. Brown warns, heterosexual couples will no longer have preference over gay men and lesbians in adoptions, schoolchildren will be taught that same-sex parenting is normal, and those who oppose it will be labeled bigots….

“’Children are taught in kindergarten, first grade, that it’s the same thing to grow up and marry a boy as to marry a girl,’ he said in a recent interview on C-Span.”

I’m sorry that they are afraid that we will treat them as badly as they have treated us for decades. I have no intention of doing so or of trying to peer into the hearts of people to see what they think of my marriage.

But the rest…it’s the very equality we are fighting for: Recognition of the reality that same-sex parenting is normal, that same-sex couples should be evaluated with the same criteria as heterosexual couples when it comes to adoption, and that gay children grow up knowing that they can grow up to marry the man or woman they love just like their straight classmates. Just like.

“I think StraightGrandmother’s point was to show that same-sex marriage and poly marriage were fundamentally different, so that the logic for one does not lead inexorably to the other.”

Yes Rob that is right, I was answering the question put to me which was, “If same gender Civil Marriage, on what basis do you then reject poly marriage”

I knocked out this argument, I say why the State will not permit poly marriage. Then we can focus back to the real discussion which Rob & Ben + others masterfully argued which is, “If Opposite Sex Civil Marriage why not Same Sex Civil Marriage?”

David, equality is one of the many things we’re saying. Its not the only thing, though it is extremely important. As I’ve said before, marriage serves many functions, for the state, for the individual, for religion, for the law.

Not just yours, not just your church’s, not just those imagined by less-than-ingenuous George. But equality, and your emphasis on it, are both important, and I believe reveal far more than you intended.

For example, you talk about the purpose of marriage, and claim that marriage for emotional reasons decouples it from procreation and child rearing. Says who? Only you. Not reality, for certain. Even the Catholic Church, in the nuptial mass, doesn’t believe that–when its gods will, children arrive.

This is an assertion, not a fact, but you treat it as the definition of marriage. Its not. It’s a normative statement, not an empirical one. Very few men and women look at each and say “Hmm. Good breeding stock! Wide child-bearing hips. Procreation! I’ll marry him/her!”

The reality is, they look at each other, they fall in love or need or addiction or lust, then men and women get married. I’ve been to over a thousand weddings, and I can assure you, an emotional union IS the fact, not the stuff lti-George made up from Catholic doctrine. Marriage remains decoupled from procreation until such time–IF EVER– they decide to procreate. Without actual studies showing that it’s procreation first, any such an assertion is just your belief, one decoupled from fact.

To claim it’s the “purpose” of marriage is similarly decoupled from fact.

Infertile people, people who hate children, people who murdered their own, old people, missing parts people, people who never have sex, people who don’t want children, people who use birth control– all of those people can get married for the emotional union, and you don’t care, not one bit.

Quite apart from the absurdity of the assertion about heterosexuals and what marriage is for them, you make an equally absurd assertion about gay people. Plenty of gay people have and do procreate, either as formerly heterosexual people, or as gay people. There is functionally no difference between a divorced woman with children who seeks to marry a man or a woman. There is no functional difference between a man who has procreated out of wedlock and seeks to marry a man or a woman. In all cases, a child is provided with a set of married parents.

And it’s all about the children, isn’t it? Of course it is, until it isn’t because it’s no longer convenient.

We are also similarly situated to heterosexuals when we’re busy adopting the rejected products of irresponsible heterosexual reproduction, which reproduction just so happens to decouple procreation and child rearing from marriage FOR THESE VERY SAME HETEROSEXUALS. We gay people are seeking to recouple them, because it’s all about the children, isn’t it?

As always, homobigots apply to gay people a standard they would never dream of applying to themselves. The procreation and childbearing arguments only apply to gay people, not heterosexuals, which is very convenient. Even the idea that emotional unions justify polyamorous marriage, or whatever claptrap you’re selling, is ludicrous. Because it’s not us that is making that argument, it’s your side. If it’s ever allowed, it’s because the heterosexual majority will allow it, not because we’re pushing it, or for that matter, anyone else is. What’s interesting to me is how you then draw a set of very convenient lines around divorced or fornicating heterosexuals, lines which include all heterosexuals in marriage, while simultaneously excluding all gay people from marriage, when those gay people and their children that you excluding are situated exactly the same as the heterosexuals that you manage to include.

Funny that– in a betraying the true agenda kind of a way.

The kinds of arguments your making are normative, filled with straw men, hidden assumptions, real hypocrisy (not the made-in-china kind you’ve manufactured for us), sleight of hand change of subjects, and a very effectively hidden agenda.

And what is that agenda? You and lti-George have said it many times. The real problem for you is not child rearing, procreation, the true meaning of marriage or any of it. The real problem for you is in one word:

EQUALITY.

Imagine: treating gay people exactly the same as straight people, which means ending this 2000 year old, vicious, baseless prejudice– at least in law– in favor of truth, justice, logic, fact, experience, and compassion. It also means upending a great deal of conservative Christian theology, which damages the brand.

Imagine having to give up the idea that being heterosexual makes you a fit parent, in some mythical never never land of Oz. It’s not Oz, it’s Ozzie and Harriet. Of course, it’s not that at all. It’s having to give up the idea that gay people are BY NATURE inferior to heterosexuals and to conservative Christians, as both humans beings, capable human beings, and moral human beings– when for 2000 years you’ve gotten away with claiming otherwise.

You give it all away right here: “What societal contribution to gay couples make that compels the State to promote and regulate them? And how does any other feature we take for granted about marriage become anything other than confusing and arbitrary?”

One could equally well ask the same question about heterosexuals. Here’s your answer: I’m a tax payer, I’m a citizen, I’m a law abiding, respected, contributing member of my society. One could also add that my family, my children, my faith, my religious freedom, my assets are every bit as important as yours. Marriage, among many factors the existence of which you ignore, creates legal family and legal kinship where none existed before, with all of the rights, responsibilities, benefits, and obligations attached thereto.

And as Rob has so eloquently pointed out before, we’ve already accepted the responsibilities and obligations, as my many friends who have been together 40-plus years will attest. Now we want the rights and the benefits. And you want to deny them, not for the reasons—and I use that word loosely—you state, but because it ends one more support for a baseless, vicious, stupid prejudice.

“”What societal contribution to gay couples make that compels the State to promote and regulate them?” One could equally well ask the same question about the bulk of heterosexual marriages, marriages which don’t last 40% of the time, despite the vast number of social forces, including promises to God himself, arrayed to keep them together. Every single thing that marriage accomplishes for heterosexuals and their children, and thus for society, it also accomplishes for homosexuals, and thus for society. You have yet to show the slightest shred of evidence or logic that says anything different.

As for THIS: “And how does any other feature we take for granted about marriage become anything other than confusing and arbitrary?” This is not our problem, this is YOUR problem. You’re easily confused by things you and lti-George have designated as arbitrary, and the confusion only arises because you believe your own claptrap. They’re not arbitrary– you only designate them so because it helps your argument. As I said, we’re not making the claim for poly-marriage, YOU ARE. They’re not confusing to anyone who can apply fact, logic, and experience to the gay marriage question.

To claim that only some people contribute because they are heterosexual, and that gay people don’t, because they are homosexual, is the rankest kind of prejudice. To make that claim as a justification for treating identically situated gay and straight people differently under law– and their children and families and faith– has crossed the line from prejudice to bigotry.

As always, the issue isn’t gay people. It’s what some heterosexuals, and a whole bunch of wanna-be-straight-but-ain’t people, think about gay people.

First let’s be clear what we’re not talking about. This isn’t like the plot of “Raising Arizona,” with gay couples breaking into the homes of happy married couples and stealing their biological children to raise as their own. We’d all be outraged by that. But we’re not talking Elizabeth Smart/Isabella Miller-Jenkins here (only, you know, reversed with gay people rather than religious fanatics doing the kidnapping).

The reality is very different. There are a lot of children growing up in less-than-ideal circumstances–with one or both parents absent or dead. To such children what you proclaim the best option–being raised by their biological parents–is simply unavailable. Isn’t it better that they be raised by two loving parents than left in an institution or left to wander the streets? And isn’t it better that the couples raising such children have the legal protections of marriage–for the sake of each other and the children–whether the couple is two men, two women, or one of each?