"Steve House" wrote in message
...

You just made the point I was illustrating - to arbitrarily define that
"marriage" can only be between persons of opposite gender may be
traditional
but it is an anachronism based solely on an aversion to homosexuality.


No it isn't.



It presupposes that homosexual love is somehow of lesser moral quality
than
heterosexual love.


No it doesn't.



People should be free to marry any person who wishes to
marry them back, regardless of their respective genders, and have the
legal
entity of a marriage of two same gender persons be indistinguishable in
any
manner from that of two opposite gender persons. That is not to say that
religious organizations shouldn't be able to define marriage and those
eligible to do so within the context of their congregations and rituals as
they wish - I was married in the Catholic church and my wife and I had to
conform to certain requirements that were not part of the civil
requirements
for marriage and that is at it should be. But the *civil* authority
should
treat same-sex and opposite-sex couples exactly alike in every respect,
including the terminology that is used to refer to the union.


Persons of the same sex cannot marry because marriage involves persons of
the opposite sex. You want government to redefine marriage so that they
can, but government doesn't have that authority.