"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
Baloney, as you say. The bills say they do not allow same-sex marriages.
There are no prohibitions against gays marrying persons of the opposite
sex.

Um, huh? How would you feel about a law that allowed ONLY same-sex
marriage? Would you feel that your right to marry had been abridged?

By your reasoning, you would not. Me, I'd feel very differently. Allowing
gays to marry a member of the opposite sex is not any better than not
allowing them to marry at all.

Here we have gone from "we don't want any government restricting our sex
life" to "we want the blessing of the government on our social
relationships." Seems hypocritical, to say the least.

There are numerous benefits, all of them regarding legal standing, to
marriage as acknowledged by the government. It is those rights that gays
want and deserve. Same-sex "marriages" happen all the time already.
However, they don't afford the participants any of the legal benefits that
the government grants participants of opposite-sex marriages.

I don't really care how the government creates equality. If they want to
get rid of marriage benefits for ALL citizens, that would be fine with me.
If they want to make life-partner benefits dependent on something other than
the ritual of marriage, that would be fine with me. And if they want to
allow gays to participate in the same legalistic ritual of marriage that
opposite-sex couples are allowed to, that would be fine with me. But the
government SHOULD allow equal standing.

You obviously haven't had any friends who were, for all intents and
purposes, a married couple of the same gender and yet could not enjoy the
same rights a government-sanctioned married couple enjoy, such as survivor
rights or health care decision-making rights. Perhaps if you had, you'd
understand better how gays are discriminated against.

But regardless, the law already does not recognize gay marriage. Adding new
laws to ban gay marriage is just plain silly. It's a waste of legislative
bandwidth.

Pete