"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
If the answer is, it's an essentially *legal* status, based on state or
Federal laws regulating marriage, then I'll want to know why it
shouldn't be available to gay as well as heterosexual couples.

Marriage is a state that exists between a man and a woman. You can
have the same legal rights between two men, or two women, if you'd
like, but you'll have to come up with a new name for it.

Why? When we broadened marriage rights to include interracial couples, we
didn't have to come up with a new name for marriage. When we broadened
voting rights to include women, we didn't have to come up with a new name
for voting (even though voting had previously been regarded--for thousands
of years, in cultures throughout the world--as an inherently male activity).

Legal definitions evolve all the time. Why should they ossify instead? An as
an empirical fact, a growing number of nations (and portions of nations,
including the US) do define legal marriage without regard to the race,
religion, or gender of the participants.

--Gary