[Safe-Keeper]

Ahh. But you're wrong. Gay's can get married.

Religious people in the USSR had freedom of religion - they had just as much a right to be an atheist as everyone else.
"You can have any car colour you want in Russia, as long as it's black."
The citizens under Saddam all had equal voting rights - no one was barred from voting Saddam Hussein.

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Equal Protection in this case is misread because it comes from an activist court.

Why? Universal suffrage, too, came about through activism, as did, as a matter of fact, most civil rights throughout history.

Nobody is being denied marriage. But you have to follow the rules.

Right. Just like Afro-American woman could ride buses as long as they followed the rules and sat in the back, as tradition demanded?

And society has a right to define those rules.

And unlike what's being parroted by the many right-wingers out there, the majority of Californians support gay marriage.

As I said before, your fanatical desires to show your "tolerance" cannot change the definiton of marriage. It is what it is.

A ridiculous argument that I've never understood. Everything changes. Democracy, marriage, cars, countries, the Internet, illnesses, everything. To pick one word or "institution" and declare it set in stone is naive and ignorant. It's like me saying "women can try all they want to get voting rights, but democracy is and will always be for men only. Allowing women would change the definition of voting rights, and we can't have that".

I think the gays would save themselves a lot of trouble if they said they were going for "civil union", not "marriage". Comments?

Yup, they certainly would. The problem is that a civil union doesn't grant them the privilegues of a marriage, so it's still discrimination. It's far better than nothing, but still not quite there.

What absolute hogwash. I think it's the other way around. Homosexual's and their fellow activists are intolerant bigots to society at large and view anybody who disagrees with their agenda in complete disdain.

The difference, of course, being that it's the homosexuals that are oppressed, and the Christian fundies (and the other anti-gays) who do the oppressing.

I'm repeatedly astounded by the ability of "certain people" forcing their religion down other peoples' throats to perceive themselves as the ones being attacked when things don't go their way. "No mandatory prayer to the Christian God before lunch for all elementary school students in Norway, regardless of their religious convictions? Why do you hate Christianity?!". Ridiculous.

Wishing to keep societal norms and working to those ends is denying nobody any rights.

Can you give me a shred of evidence that gay marriage is having negative effects on society, without invoking the correlation equals causation fallacy or just going "it's obvious!"? And why do you want to "keep societal norms"? Which norms? Don't you want your society progressing? And which norms do you think gay marriage will damage?

Also, the right to marriage doesn't exist at all.

What's it matter whether or not it's a right or a privilegue? Voting is a right, it's still denied to certain people (such as those who aren't citizens). And people far, far less qualified than gays to raise families, procreate, and form the "traditional family"(TM) are allowed to marry without you guys giving a hoot, which makes it fairly clear to me that this whole "sanctity of marriage" deal is just an excuse.

You can't start a family when you have two months left to live. Yet the terminally ill can marry.
Child molesters aren't exactly model parents. Yet pedophiles can marry.
The sterile won't ever procreate. They can still marry.
People with horrific genetic defects shouldn't have sex and procreate. They are still allowed to marry.
Heck, even Rush freaking Lindbaugh is allowed to marry, and he's been divorced, what, three times?

So why can't gays marry? Simple, tradition. That's all it boils down to - not making sure all the families there are happy, but making sure they stay as they currently are, just because change is viewed as hostile to those who want to "uphold the sanctity of marriage".

But marriage is a well defined institution. I don't think many of the people of this thread can see the distinction. Nor do they want to.

Explained earlier in my post.

All of those listed are along the same lines. You don't see male bears humping other male bears in the woods!

"If we were meant to fly, we'd have been born with wings!" What is it with fundies and the appeal to nature fallacy? And this is oftentimes the same kind of people who get outraged whenever some "Darwinist" (heh) comes about and says humans are animals.

Oh, and homosexuality is an observed trait in over half a hundred species throughout the entire animal kingdom. This is a well-established fact. I know that the instant I say this, everyone will backpedal and pretend they're not the ones who brought up the natural/unnatural question to begin with and ask me why the **** it matters, but there you have it.

But oh well, appeal to nature is a fallacy, so it's an irrelevant point anyhow.