good

Pandagon has the smackdown best, and reasoned post, on marriage that I've read yet.

Again, there's no constitutional argument. Yes, the priest/reverend/rabbi/mullah/pastor/etc says "power invested in me" when he/she marries a couple but let's be real. His power is spritual ceremonial power. There are people who get married in courthouses by justices of the peace. What I'm trying to say is that it is the state that makes you married---that little piece of paper you wait in line for to get signed---at the courthouse. In most states you cannot be legally married without that little piece of paper, and most ministers/etc. cannot marry you until you have it.

In the state of Pennsylvania, until very recently, couples who never actually married but lived together, owned property together, had kids together for an extended period of time were (are?, not sure about this...) considered married for all intents and purposes. Of course, they had to be straight.

Now I don't think gay people want to subvert the entire society and make people marry people of the same sex. Remember, this is what Phyliss Schallfy (or however you spell her name) did when she defeated the ERA...the claims that all bathrooms would be unisex and pregnant women would be sent to the front were totally false, but her group put them out. What happened to the ERA? Gone. What I think gay people who want to make their monogomous relationships legal want is simply the things that my parents have--the right not to have to testify against their spouse...the right to inherit if their spouse dies, the right to provide for their spouse if they die through insurance, the right to adopt, the right to health insurance, the right to even visit their spouse during family visiting hours. I think that's all they want, since the overwhelming majority of Americans have this right. That's really all they want...not to liberate people so they can marry their cats or marry each other in groups or marry dead people, etc... That's not going to happen. Plus, it's left to the states to decide.

Let it also be known that it was just 40 years ago that blacks and whites could not marry each other in most states legally. Alabama still has the ban, although not enforced.

I just say leave people be, but I'm practically libertarian so what do I know...heh.

Perhaps more should be done to fix marriage. Half of them fail. And with birthrates falling in the US, I'd say more than a few do not produce children. If we have these "Defense of Marriage" acts, then something should be done to make it not fail so much. If it were an airplane, it would have been grounded and dismantled a long time ago. That's a horrid analogy, yes, but I think it works.