If the government regulates it, it MUST be applied evenly. Please do read the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Driving is not a basic right, nor is it a right at all. Should we decide who can drive based on race, religion, sexual orientation...just because the majority feels like it can bully people with a vote? That is your argument from a few posts up, yes? And now you seem to be calling homosexuals criminals. As I said before, your logic mystifies me.

TWRL: You're ignoring the large impact of basic rights. Otherwise white people could just enslave black people and indigenous populations. As has happened. Everywhere. Your logic mystifies me. cogmeyer: I couldn't agree more. Government should have no say in who lives with whom an under what definition. We wouldn't have this problem to begin with if the government would stay out of it. However, now that government is involved, the laws need to be applied equally. That's what I've been saying all along. Maybe that's just my Libertarian views.

"Sorry, such a relationship, however wonderful and loving and committed it may be, is not the same as a marriage. That's the way it has been all the way back even to Ancient Greece, where homosexuality was common. Keep a permanent homo-sexual partner? Sure! And may they be happy. But "marry" them? Why? Marriage exists as a state of social obligation of procreating couples. It exists for no other reason. There are all sorts of different wonderful human relationships that are not covered by marriage. Nor should they be. They carry no social obligation, nor moral imperative; and should fall outside of government meddling and incentives." I actually used to agree with you, but then I thought of the very basic tenets our country is founded upon. Gay marriage SHOULD HAVE become a fundamental right the INSTANT the state got involved (issuing marriage licenses, tax breaks, etc.). If marriage is something done outside the realm of the state's purview, then it should not be regulated, and under our freedoms of religion, it would be up to whatever church to decide whether to perform ceremonies, and it would be meaningless in the eyes of the law. HOWEVER, this is not the case. The state got involved in what I would argue is an entirely religious rite. At that point, the law must be applied evenly. (This is also the reason I think "hate crime" legislation is BS and unconstitutional, but people are afraid to fight it for fear of being labeled as a bigot). Anyone objecting to gay marriage is only doing so because it is something they don't like or agree with. It's solely an emotional argument, and emotions have no place in law. As for calling it judicial tyranny, that's a total fallacy. I will reiterate that the whole reason we have our government and the freedoms we are supposed to have under our Constitution is the prevention of mob rule. Essentially our Bill of Rights guarantees that the rights of the underrepresented are not oppressed. Was it Franklin who said, "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote"? Whether arms be literal weapons or the protection of the judicial branch is irrelevant. And for me, the bottom line comes down to this: If gay marriage is allowed, it IN NO WAY harms or impinges on the rights of any other citizen. Your slippery-slope argument about consenting siblings is different. Science shows us that birth defects are heightened from incest, and that would be a reason to disallow those relationships as being sanctioned by the state, as it's protecting the rights of the unborn child (yes, sometimes "think of the children" is a valid argument). Why should the government, which is there to serve the people (in theory, though not really in practice) ban something that makes people happy without harming a single other person? Is it because you don't *like* the idea? Can you actually rationalize your argument and answer that question, with logic rather than emotion and some argument based in religion (many forms of which are far more offensive to the general public than, say, letting two people who love each other get married)? As far as I'm concerned, marriage is an abstract concept. It means different things to different people. Why the hell should the majority get to tell the minority what it should think?

Not at all what I'm saying. The law is being enforced, as no gay marriages are taking place. Elected officials have made statements against it, as they do with numerous laws. Very much like the arguments to lower the voting age to 18 instead of 21. And it IS going through the proper channels, in this case, the judicial branch. I would hope that if my elected representatives found a law morally reprehensible that they would not support it. What you're saying sounds like the same line of reasoning (albeit far less extreme) of a concentration camp guard saying he was only following orders and therefore isn't at all responsible for the Holocaust. After all, shouldn't the state defend its laws? Or should the state pick and choose? Prop. 8 is hate-based legislation passed by playing to religious views (which should be separate from the state for this very reason, as the founding fathers intended) and marketed by fear (THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!), that was also unfounded, to sway a not-at-all-overwhelming majority of voters to make a law that, if applied to any other way we differentiate people (skin color, ethnic background, faith, music choice, etc.), would be shot down as unconstitutional right away. People just aren't comfortable with it, so they pretend it's OK and try to rationalize it by saying we should think of the children. What's next? Will we give women the right to vote!?

Ah, the old "mob rule" argument. I wonder how you would feel if people discriminated based on hair color or something else entirely inane. If voters decided to ban all Muslims from flying, I wonder if you wold argue the same way. The whole point of the government is to prevent mob rule. Without the balance of power (judicial branch), mob rule would run rampant in this case. As someone wrote when New York approved gay marriage, "A fundamental right was finally extended to all citizens equally, and it had absolutely no negative effect on anyone." I'm neither gay nor Muslim, but that matters not. I'm human and therefore approve of all humans having the basic rights they should be guaranteed by our constitution. (Check the preamble and the 14th Amendment if you aren't familiar with that old thing). As for the whole "voters approve" thing, the same could be said of many draconian laws of segregation in the past. Yet we seem to need to learn the same lessons time and again because people vote based on emotion rather than any form of logic.