DonAthos

Do you mean that putting your arguments in a straightforward manner makes you sound like a bigot or a homophobe? That's not a claim I ever made, and I'm not responsible for it if it were true. If you are against homosexual marriage, be courageous enough to say so. And no, I won't forgive you for your evasive and obnoxious manner, though I am comprising another post to address your... "position."

I could give you more flak, if you'd like? But seriously, my manner towards Devil isn't due to the content of his arguments, but due to his apparent intellectual dishonesty, and to the number of jerky comments he has smuggled into his replies, and his unwillingness to defend or explain those things he says. If you acted in like fashion, I would treat you the same. That said, I rely on you to remain as you always have been: unfailingly polite and willing to honestly engage. Even when you're wrong.

I don't agree with this, and I find that it reflects a "separate but equal" stance. You don't believe that keeping them nominally separate would not convey some meaning of itself? If it did not, why would some folks be so insistent on legally enforcing these distinctions, up to and including amending state and federal constitutions? A concern for clarity in conceptualizing? No, not that, for as you immediately note: If we maintain two water fountains, alike in all ways, but one is for "whites" and the other is for "coloreds," because we wish to preserve the purity of the one fountain for the whites (just as some cast this as a battle to "defend" marriage), would you not find that discriminatory? Would there be any good non-discriminatory reason to distinguish these fountains in this manner, do you suppose? I find it questionable that two types of contracts under different terms will not therefore have different outcomes, even if they are otherwise worded alike. Beyond that, consider that civil unions (as you subsequently mention) are not currently equivalent to marriages. If we hold them as two separate things, they likely never will be (and will always be susceptible to further discriminatory efforts). Anyways, as to whether Devil's Advocate wishes them to be equivalent, or actually believes them to be, consider that he said this earlier: So... at least we're all agreed that A is A! Consider that Devil's Advocate (for I assume it is *that* D.A. that you mean! ) is speaking to the "concept" of marriage, and not simply its legal status. Were marriage stricken from governance, he would still not recognize a homosexual couple married by their church, living together forever, raising children, etc., and so forth, as actually married -- and he would argue that you shouldn't either. Whether the government should be marrying people at all, I consider a separate topic. My stance has been, and continues to be, that *if* the government marries people, it should do so in a non-discriminatory fashion with respect to same-sex couples. And of course Devil's Advocate disagrees. But his disagreement goes beyond that government ought not call a homosexual civil union a "marriage," or that the government ought not marry. He believes gender to be essential to the concept of marriage, and he believes that there is no such thing as a same-sex marriage. All right. So, I have little interest in scouring the thread for this personally, but if you would be so kind? Point out the instances where anyone has called you a "bigot" or described your arguments as "homophobic." Please do. Please.

I think that Jonathan is saying, not that he has studied a sample of OL members and drawn an inference as to the general population, but that he knows every instance and is commenting on all of them. ETA: Er... is that what you're saying, Jonathan?

'K. I'm not going to pretend like what you say has any real meaning -- it does not -- but I do have a question for you, if you're game: Suppose a modern day church "marries" a homosexual couple (like I suspect some of them do). And that homosexual couple lives together, and they adopt a child and raise it, and they grow old in love, and etc., and share their household till they die, at which point they bequeath their estate to the child that they have raised. How would you describe their relationship? Would you say that this couple had been "married" to one another?

Perhaps neither here nor there, and I wouldn't necessarily trust a personal anecdote from years ago either, but having worked with Yaron Brook, I found him intelligent and personable. Just a good guy. And that's all I got. Not to say that he'll do no wrong or anything, but I like him being a prominent Objectivist.

More high school crap. Yup. Not doing that. Indeed, context is everything. The history of marriage -- and we're agreed as to its history -- is part of the context. Also part of the context is modern society (i.e. that we do not live in Ancient Rome), and the fact that history does not force us to treat present legal institutions in the manner of the past, or according to the Latin derivation of the terms employed. That's the part of the context that you consistently drop. Incorrect. I have disagreed with your conception of marriage, and the basis on which you've argued for that conception -- i have not "condemned" those things (unless describing "tradition" as forming the basis for modern legal codes as being "silly" is condemnation, in which case, sure, have at it). I *have* condemned your refusal to state your proposition clearly and without reservation. Paraphrased: "You're against homosexual marriage." "No I'm not!" "You're for it, then?" "No! But I'm not against homosexual marriage; I'm for heterosexual-only marriage!" Also, I have condemned your baiting tactics and your juvenile rhetoric. What clock is ticking again? What was I meant to be backpedaling about? I keep asking about all of these little remarks you pepper your posts with, but you keep not responding to any of my questions -- I guess that's your way of saying that it was never important to begin with. So why don't you just cut the crap out of your posts? My interest, with respect to this discussion, is not to "end the discrimination of homosexuals." It is to treat them the same per our legal institutions. It is to not insist on a distinction between "marriage" and "civil union," on the basis of the gender of the participants when there is no purpose for the government to either recognize or enforce such a distinction. But where legal discrimination against minorities and women did end is when we began to treat them the same with respect to our legal institutions. Of course not. But when they *are* married -- or when they are as a heterosexual couple are when on the cusp of marriage, and desirous of it -- we *can* end this vestige of legal discrimination against those relationships by offering the same institution to them as we do to heterosexual relationships.

Quoted, because this might be our last point of agreement. Do you have any idea how unappealing this kind of junk rhetoric is? Who the hell cares for your judgement of anyone's "intellectual prowess"? And "the clock's ticking"? What clock, exactly? The clock where, when it goes off, you'll stop acting like this is some sort of high school debate? Get off it already. If I were to describe your "argument" about the origin of the word marriage as "sophisticated," what would you suppose I meant? Would I be referring to the common usage of today -- refined, subtle, complex? Or would I be describing you as a sophist, and accusing you of intellectual dishonesty? Or would I be going further back into the Greek meaning of wise? And what if I told you that this is not Ancient Rome? That whatever terms for marriage we offer in this country are not bound by what Emperor Nero did, or failed to do, with his male slave? (Slave, incidentally, not necessarily referring to an individual of Slavic ethnic descent, though the etymology might lead you to argue otherwise.) You have consistently refused to be upfront about arguing against same-sex marriage. Your claims that you're in favor of an equivalent "civil union," just that we must use a separate term for some silly reason (tradition!), are worthless, even if true. If the institutions are the same, there would then be no point in using a separate term. We have no good reason to distinguish between homosexual couples and heterosexual couples, and because "they did so in Ancient Rome" is not a good reason. Society has no value in keeping separate homosexual couples who wish to commit to each other (as in a civil union, or marriage) versus heterosexual couples who wish to do likewise. And there are good reasons, such as what I have provided (and also see: Brown vs. Board of Education) as to why we ought not endorse "separate but equal" legal institutions.

Okay. I think I understand. Though the question of "providing material support" to a tyrannical government (which seems to be the dividing line you're suggesting between the Church being a legitimate target of protest and not), hmm... Don't governments (tyrannical and otherwise) typically derive their "material support" through taxation? And such taxation, far from "nullifying" citizens' complaints of tyranny against said government or sundry supportive elements (because, hey, everyone pays 'em), is often the mechanism of said tyranny, or the figurehead against which protests are directed (e.g. the Tea Act). Earlier, in regards to the British East India Co., you described the salient feature of the relationship between that company and the British monarchy being that it was a "state sanctioned coercive monopoly." And no argument there. But that doesn't seem to speak to material support provided to the government; rather it appears to suggest that the crown was providing improper benefits to the company. So I might wonder whether the Russian Orthodox Church derives any particular privileges from Putin's government. Fair enough. I've no intention of "going there" (nor do I even really know where "there" is ); I was only trying to make sense of part of Nicky's explanation here: It seems to me that he's talking about the character of the protest or the protesters. Since we can't mean to say that the Sons of Liberty knew that their actions would "culminate in the American Revolution" (nor do we know what might ultimately happen in Russia, or how Pussy Riot's actions may feature in future history books), then I guess we would judge them currently as to how "organized" or "principled" they appear to be versus their "caprice." I mean, I can't hold you to explain Nicky's words -- but that's what I was referring to. Maybe I read this wrong (in fact, I'll say it's likely that I did), but it seems to me that he's saying that an "organized, principled" group like the Sons of Liberty has the right to such a protest, but a "capricious" group like the Pussy Riot girls do not (given that we're directing these efforts against a suitable target, such as the British East India Co.).

All right. Just to make this clear for myself, then, you and Nicky aren't arguing that softwareNerd is wrong in principle. Indeed, property rights notwithstanding, there are cases (i.e. under tyranny) where actions such as the Tea Party (or presumably, playing protest music a la Pussy Riot) would be justified. But in the present case, the Russian Church does not have the same sorts of ties to Putin or the Russian government as the British East India Co. did to the Crown. (And possibly Pussy Riot is not judged to be the sort of organization able to conduct a proper protest like the Sons of Liberty.) Am I on the right track here?

So, out of curiosity... should whatever forces behind same-sex marriage prevail, if we were to revisit this argument, say, a hundred years from now... would your conceptualization of marriage have changed to embrace this new "tradition"?

Well, they do go together like a horse and carriage. This I'll tell you, brother: you can't have one without the other.

I have zero knowledge about the present situation with, uh... Pussy Riot... but I'm reading phrases in this thread like "crime" and "legitimate act of protest," and it has me thinking... (and somehow assuming that I'm competent to comment, which I probably am not. Ah well...) The Boston Tea Party. Crime? Legitimate act of protest? Both? I'm fairly certain that it fits somewhere under "crime." Yet it also seems to be an act of protest. But "legitimate"? does that depend on the outcome of the Revolution, and subsequent "writing of the history books"? or is there some valid test that we can apply in real time -- perhaps as to degree of tyranny -- whereby we can determine whether it is legitimate or not? How tyrannical is Putin vs. King George on the tyrannometer? Given sufficient tyranny -- a government ultimately restricting assembly, speech, etc. (which is not to imply anything about Putin, as again, "zero knowledge") -- any meaningful act of protest will ultimately have to involve a criminal act of some kind. If citizens' first obligation were to follow the law, regardless of what that law entails, then a tyranny's path for self-preservation would be to retreat into further and deeper tyranny, and that doesn't sound like an ideal plan for folks who enjoy freedom. Thoughts?

I usually find the "libertarian" conversation (not just here, but in general) to be so confused that there's little profit in trying to suss it all out. But, for what it's worth, here are a couple of cents: There's a difference between "libertarianism" as a philosophy and the Libertarian political party. A libertarian, in the sense of someone who "believes in capitalism," but has detached that from other philosophical considerations, and doesn't even believe that those considerations matter, is wrong. But a member of the Libertarian political party has not necessarily divorced his personal political philosophy from metaphysics, epistemology, ethics. Though Objectivism is not a political party, and though the philosophy encompasses far more than politics, it makes sense that -- to take political action -- like-minded Objectivists would act in concert to achieve political change. When folks act in that fashion, and especially in an ongoing fashion keeping infrastructure and etc., we tend to describe it as a "political party." Supposing that Objectivists by-and-large supported... oh, I don't know, a measure to legalize marijuana, it is unlikely that they would demand that all those who plan on voting for that measure take a test as to their stance on measurement omission. Every yea vote would count alike, whether from an Objectivist, or from a wacky Christian, or etc. In this way, an Objectivist political party would "make common cause" with those who seek to legalize marijuana, but "for the wrong reasons." This does not mean that Objectivists would thus pander to wacky Christians to seek their votes, but it does speak to the reality of how voting works. Unless Objectivists believe that it would be wrong to ever attempt to implement political change, finally they would have to work within an organization that... might come to look a lot like the Libertarian party does. So if the Libertarian party is hopeless for this purpose and cannot be salvaged, that's fine. But what then? Do we need an "Objectivist party"? Or are we saying that the Republican party is somehow more closely aligned to Objectivist philosophy...? Which leads me to this: I *really* hope this doesn't become the umpteenth thread discussing the merits of Obama vs. Romney, because I have no interest in spending my time contemplating those folks, but... Aren't Objectivists (which is not to say "Objectivism" necessarily, but possibly including "prominent Objectivists") continually arguing that we ought to support X Lesser Evil in politics, and specifically because it is the "lesser evil"? Am I imagining/misremembering that happening?

Since you're a fan of history, here's some recent stuff to chew on: So I state that you're against allowing homosexuals to marry. To which you claim that I'm creating a straw man. Fine. So then I state that you're for allowing homosexuals to marry, and that I must have misunderstood you before (because, you know, "straw man" and all). To which you gripe about sarcasm, and throw in some juvenile crap about "backpedaling." When I demonstrate that your claim of "I'm not against homosexual marriage; only for heterosexual-only marriage" argument is preposterous (which I suppose isn't "backpedaling," but I don't know, because who-the-hell knows what you meant by that?)... You try to interpret it out of context so you don't have to deal with the meaning that you pretend not to understand. Do you take any of this seriously at all? Or are you just playing a game? (Being "Devil's Advocate," I suppose.) There is no need for "a legal classification of longterm/monogamous/heterosexual" relationships as opposed to "longterm/monogamous/homosexual" relationships. Even if you stripped marriage down to whatever you thought it should finally contain, there would still be no purpose for the government to treat homosexual couples any differently than heterosexual couples.

Your "advocacy," as stated, is the very thing which is discriminatory. If I "only support the concept of marriage as a long term, monogamous heterosexual relationship... between people of the same race" then I haven't magicked away the fact that I'm arguing against miscegenation.

If I have a school, that is not of itself discriminatory. If I hang a sign on my school that says "no homosexuals" it is. If you offer marriage, that is not of itself discriminatory. If you insist on "no homosexuals" it is. But obviously I must have misunderstood you. You are, in fact, arguing that homosexual couples should be allowed to marry. So there is nothing discriminatory about your position.

I imagine you might. That should be easier than attempting to answer the questions I'd asked, or for you to provide any sensible rationale for your attempt at ad hominem. Marriage is not "inherently discriminatory and abusive," but your conception of marriage and advocacy is absolutely discriminatory.

What "approach" are you talking about? What do you mean "encourage the government"? Church?? What does any of this mean? You are against allowing homosexuals to marry. I understand. I think it's somewhat like those who were against miscegenation, or against racial integration of schools, or etc. They had a lot of "history and tradition," after all, on their side. I'm not keen on the government sanctioning relationships (which typically implies that some are not allowed, like polygamous relationships) or running schools, and would like to see both practices stop, but in the interim I'm glad for the ending of officially sanctioned racial discrimination. Do you mean to say that if we were having this discussion in the 1950s, but about racial integration, that you would be chastising me for arguing against segregation on the grounds that I would somehow be "encouraging the government"? (And who specifically am I meant to be encouraging at the moment, and by what means? Go ahead and explain; I'm eager to hear your rationale.)

As I have said before, I am not in favor of the government's role in education. But while the government does run schools, they must not discriminate for race, sexual orientation, etc.

Have you ever had a "conversation" with a socialist about capitalism? If so, I imagine it proceeded much like this conversation with Devil's Advocate re: marriage. You'll hear lots of "history" about the awful things that supposed capitalists have done, and how governments have intervened (and continue to intervene) on behalf of industrialists, and etc. You'll say something about how capitalism is the economic system that exists in a state where individual rights are protected, and how none of that is actually capitalism properly understood, or so forth, and your socialist partner will say, "hey, I'm just talking about the history of capitalism, which you must understand to know the true nature of capitalism." What stone age folks did for marriage, or Edwardian England, or etc., does not matter to what marriage is currently, or what it ought to be. You don't have to go back too far in US history to find anti-miscegenation laws, and such. It was all very traditional. But tradition is a poor excuse to act in this manner, because it is discriminatory and does not speak to the role or function of marriage in modern society. The reasons I had to marry my wife, any gay man or woman might have for their partner. And thus they should have access to the same institution. If you think that "history" somehow demands otherwise, then "we the living" must simply disagree with you.

Intended by who? And why does anybody require "sanction" to "create families"? Whose sanction? Yours? You keep offering your interpretations as to the history of marriage... but why should I care about the history of marriage? I don't use the history of citizenship to determine what citizenship ought to be, here and now. I don't rely upon the history of human rights to determine what rights actually are, or ought to be. You speak of "tradition" and quote a "traditional ceremony." What exactly is that "tradition" worth, and to whom, and why should any honest thinker give a damn? Presumed by who? Marriage, for me and my wife, was about our commitment to each other. We were not agreeing to "provide future members to [our] community." Homosexual couples have the same interests as heterosexual couples do with respect to raising children and transferring property. Your point re: children is what? That a homosexual couple cannot create biological offspring between each other? So what? You've already mentioned adoption, and there are other options as well, such as sperm donation or surrogacy (or even children from previous relations). Who should care that a homosexual couple has their three month old through a surrogate, or have adopted him? What in the world should that matter to anything?

Incorrect. It is (as I have clearly stated) an argument against this particular boundary -- there is no meaningful difference 10 minutes before or after a C-section with respect to the child, or the child's source of rights. If you had another boundary to suggest, then perhaps there would be a meaningful difference. But birth is not it. I'm not begging the question, I'm asserting my essential argument. Saying that it is a child is not my rationale, but a restatement of my premise (and an obvious one at that). Of course you won't. Fidelity to your conclusion demands nothing less. Of course a child isn't a child 10 minutes before delivery. Well, you're wrong. The paragraph to which you're responding is meant to demonstrate that viability is a more meaningful threshold than birth, and moreover that it meets the criteria you'd set out earlier, i.e."objective and provable and clearly understandable boundaries," (though it may not be the threshold I would ultimately argue for), not an argument that a child "exists right now," as such. Though that latter is, again, obvious. Excuse me, but what are you even talking about? Where do I "[reify] faculty of rationality"? I don't think you'll find it, because that's just something you're making up. Here's Rand on "reason" from "The Objectivist Ethics" (per the Lexicon): Note that she makes no claims as to what material we're talking about, nor even that there is any extant material (as a person could be in a real sensory deprivation chamber). This faculty is possessed by every human consciousness, even those who are not "rational," and yes, including those humans 10 minutes before and after their birth. The faculty is possessed by a person before he identifies or integrates any material; it is, indeed, by virtue of that faculty that he is capable of doing so! Is it possessed by an embryo? Nope. So we're not debating whether an embryo has rights. But does a child, 10 minutes before birth, possess "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses"? Why yes, it does! (The main difference between 10 minutes before and after is that 10 minutes after the child has *more* material provided by his senses -- but that is not a statement about his ability to identify/integrate that material, which he possessed prior to being born). And since "the Objectivist case for rights centers on having a faculty of rationality," I suppose that is the argument made. Is it not? Indeed. It is enough to wonder why you ever advanced that argument in the first place. Again, possessing a "faculty of reason" is not the same as being rational, though you seek to equivocate between them here. Why should a "fetus" not be able to have whatever consciousness 10 minutes before birth as 10 minutes after? Because it has not yet opened its eyes (howsoever briefly)? What magic do you suppose happens in that time frame (which may as well be 1 minute on either side, or 10 seconds) which gifts to the child "human style consciousness" and rights accordingly? And of course the paragraph you're supposedly responding to here is meant as examples of evidence for the kinds of sensory information that a human child receives in utero. Did you not understand that? Did you think I was talking about "all mammalian infants" or something? Where did I lose you? We were talking about human beings. You wrongly claimed that a child in the womb is as in a sensory deprivation chamber, and thus cannot have the faculty of reason necessary to enjoy rights. I argued that a child in the womb does indeed sense, and is possessed of the faculty of reason (at least, according to how Rand described it), and thus does indeed have rights per the standards you yourself have laid out. Right?

Let's go a step at a time so I can examine my own rationale, and hopefully we can find those places where we disagree. (This may get messy as I tend to be a little discursive... please forgive.) I imagine myself as a gay man. I'm in a romantic relationship with a partner I love. I examine my relationship with my partner, and it seems analogous to relationships I've observed among heterosexual couples with respect to several criteria: we share love and fidelity; live together; have arranged our household in a particular manner, reflecting shared tastes and compromise; expect to be with each other for the extent of our lives; we may have an extended family, like shared children, or plans to create one. When heterosexual couples possess those criteria, they often get married. Is there any reason for me to get married? There is the potential romance of a formal expression of those things I've listed, and whatever it may be worth to a person to have a traditional expression of those things as well. There is a social recognition of that same relationship. What might that social recognition be worth? I'm unsure, though one aspect might have an engagement akin to a verbal commitment, and the wedding a formal "Letter of Intent" in college football recruiting (if that example is worth anything to you). There are rules within recruiting about competing schools contacting those athletes who have already made commitments and issued a Letter of Intent... and socially it may be acceptable to court an unattached woman or man, but possibly less so someone who is engaged or married. The engagement/wedding ring, as much as anything else, can be a signifier to someone who might not otherwise know (like a stranger) that this person is not interested in new romance. Further, there can be political dimensions to marriage, as tax codes may be written to reflect how people manage their households in practice, or whither fall military benefits for the deceased, or other issues of property inheritance, etc. (This is not to take up the argument for or against any one of these policies specifically, or to say whether, as an example, relief from an unjust tax is an "entitlement" or not. This is merely to posit why I, in my guise as a gay man, might want to get married to my partner.) In terms of lifestyle, when I and my same-sex partner can describe ourselves as "all but married," or see ourselves in the same roles as a heterosexual couple who would then get married... then it appears to make sense for me to seek marriage itself. If some aspect of it is denied by others (such as legal recognition, and the consequent adjustment to tax codes or inheritance policy), we may opt to still perform our own extra-legal ceremony. If the world is hostile enough, it might be a secret one. But indeed, we would be "married" to each other, which in this case is a recognition of the reality of our relationship -- that of spouse to spouse -- just as a heterosexual couple might be married to each other, though in some frontier situation without the benefit of a formal government capable of codifying the institution. Beyond that, why would we "need" legal institutions to reflect this reality, and to treat us as they do heterosexual unions? What of "civil unions" as my relief? I suspect that there's a case to be made about "equal protection," and maybe related to Brown v. Board as against Plessy v. Ferguson*, and the doctrine of "separate but equal." Earlier I suggested citizenship as an institution that has changed over time, in terms primarily of who is allowed citizenship. Imagine that we had a society in which only whites were allowed citizenship, and that we were confronting a movement to extend citizenship to blacks. Suppose, in response, we said that we would identify these so-called "black citizens" as "civil members of society" rather than citizens, for after all, citizenship has traditionally been reserved for whites only, and it is unfair to whites to impress upon them this new meaning. But a "civil member of society" will receive every legal benefit of citizenship, so there is no reason to complain or need anything different. Were I a black man in such a society, I would be worried that it would be all-too-easy to devise different legal approaches for a "civil member of society" as against a citizen, if those approaches didn't already exist. But beyond that, I would wonder why the government would feel it necessary to codify a difference between "citizen" and "civil member of society" if the only actual difference is skin color. Why would the government deem it necessary to treat people differently according to the color of their skin, and should it? Isn't this a statement that this distinction is not just historical or traditional, but real and worth preserving? That there is a *real* difference between "citizen" and "civil member," accounting to skin color and thus demonstrated in our terminology? If this is not discrimination itself (the bad kind, I mean), doesn't it almost demand it? To bring this back to marriage, if we say that heterosexual couples who treat themselves and each other in every respect as a "married" couple may do, can in fact be married, but a homosexual couple who acts likewise may only enter into a "civil union," then aren't we (in our capacity as "government") saying that there is a meaningful difference between these pairings that we must reflect with our laws? But where is that meaningful difference? When I initially posited my scenario, I said the following: "we share love and fidelity; live together; have arranged our household in a particular manner, reflecting shared tastes and compromise; expect to be with each other for the extent of our lives; we may have an extended family, like shared children, or plans to create one." So what is it that a heterosexual couple has that entitles them to marriage, that such a homosexual couple, alike in everything but gender, lacks? Where is the meaningful difference between these two relationships that justifies two separate terms to describe them (if not legal strategies, though that will almost certainly follow, if we're being honest)? Please note, when you say "forcing traditional marital couples to identify gay relationships as being the same as heterosexual relationships is not only irrational, but unjustified coercion," that this is not at all what we're talking about. I don't care at all about the beliefs of any specific "traditional marital couple." They can view gay relationships in any manner they please. They can hate blacks, and consider them not to be "real citizens." They may think whatever they'd like, and I wish them well in their intolerance. But when we're talking about how we administer the governance of our country, then I must insist upon equal protection before the law, and that separate is not equal. With regard to marriage, I find that a homosexual couple can have a relationship that is in every important respect the equivalent to a heterosexual couple. And so to treat them differently (or as a "civil union" suggests, to treat them the same yet call it something different, which I find disingenuous on its face) is not only a failure to recognize the reality of the situation, it is an affront. There is another argument to be made that government ought not be involved in marriage at all, and perhaps that's true. But just as I do not believe the government ought to be educating children, yet I will insist upon equality of education for children without respect to skin color, so long as the government *is* educating children, I must similarly argue for equal treatment for homosexual and heterosexual couples. *** *Odd trivia: Plessy triggers spellcheck, but Ferguson does not. Spellcheck likewise triggers spellcheck.

There's no question (at least none that I'm aware of) that marriage has historically referred to a pairing of man and woman. But is there a good argument that it must remain so? You say that "blank[ing] out the role of gender in marriage... [is] questionable..." Okay. But don't leave it there. Yes. The case for "gay marriage" is to recognize marriage as a relationship between two individuals without respect to gender. And you find that transition from what you correctly identify as "traditional marriage" to be "questionable" at least. But on what grounds? Simply because it is a change? Human institutions do change, routinely. What constituted a "citizen" in ancient Athens is different from what "citizenship" is today in the United States. To say that a change is proposed is not to argue that this change is good or bad, or should be adopted or dismissed. So, given that the recognition of "gay marriage" does indeed represent a change from a traditional perspective, do you think that change is good or bad, and on what grounds?