I agree too...

Fine.

But it sure damn well better happen in the normal course of legislative action - as occurred in Maine - instead of trying to have it crammed down our throat by 3-2 votes of the Supreme Judicial Court in Boston (via full-faith-and-credit). Because when that latter path is taken, you get what happened yesterday in Texas.

When put to the public vote, bans to gay marriage win EVERY TIME. It is now (IIRC) 16-0 including double-digit victories in California and Oregon.

The typical response of the garden variety American, when pushed, is to resist. The LGBT comminuty would be much better served to keep their heads (and attitudes) down and plug away.

It's the main reason that I cannot get worked up over the issue.

As a pro-gay-marriage Republican, I must say I put some of the responsibility on the gay community. They have a large PR problem that they need to address.

Most of this country views homosexuals as child molestors and the weirdos they see on Jerry Springer. In reality this is far from the truth. My gay friends are actually more normal than my straight friends.

Gays reject civil unions which would give them the legal rights they say they want, so I can't see how they can expect to be taken seriously.

From nospedbumps.com:
"Does anyone really believe that a movement will take hold to block gays from adopting children or to block lesbian women from being artificially impregnated?"

This part of his argument strikes me as a bit shaky. Just as JD notes above for gay marriage, if it came up for a public vote, gay adoption would definitely be blocked. Why should we assume that it would not come up for such a vote? It is easy to see votes like the one in TX as the first step in this process.

In Texas, I can imagine them passing all sorts of anti-gay legislation, if they thought they could still get away with it. Starting with outlawing consentual gay sex (among adults) and going on from there. And the Blogotocracy (sonservative/"libertarian" branch) would tut tut and say it was the fault of the gay lobby.

I don't buy the acceptance of gay marriage as an inevitability. In a few decades, advancements in genetic science are probably going to enable parents to choose the sexual orientation of their potential offspring, and what parent ISN'T going to want to have offspring that can naturally produce grandchildren for them? If less and less people are "born gay," I suspect the demand for gay marriage will wane as well.

While many have ethical problems with the creation of "designer babies," but I think there's far greater reason to believe that genetic-modification is inevitable than is gay marriage.

Maybe, if the courts leave this sort of thing to the states where it belongs. If Colorado wants to permit homosexual marriage, adoption, etc. but Kansas does not and is allowed not to, then one might call it an advance. But if, in the name of "enlightened" opinion, homosexual marriage, adoption, etc. are shoved down the throats of Kansans, then the battle hasn't even started.

Actually Michael, we did have laws against same-sex oral and anal sex in Tx untill it got struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003. It wasn't just TX though, there were a couple of other states with similar laws.
As for this particular issue, I don't think that the people of TX are anti-gay for the sake of being anti-gay...I think this was an issue where they felt that their "traditional" marriages were at risk (I still fail to see the reasoning there) and they voted to protect those institutions. However, I could be WAY off...I live in Austin and over 60% of us voted against it!!

The corollary to the gay-marriage issue is polygamy. If three or more adults of any gender want to formalize their relationship through something analogous to "marriage", why can't they?

And while we're redefining marriage, what would a polygamous divorce look like? The same questions which NoSpeedBumps asks of gay divorce, ought to be asked of polygamous divorce.

Libertarians always chime in about now about polygamy & other such variations.

Such thinking ignores human nature. It is human nature to pair off (it's also human nature to cheat, but that's another story). In humans, PAIRS are natural; groups aren't, for the most part.

Pairs are also reasonably fair, which is another reason they're popular.

Polygamy is manifestly unfair to the majority of the people--the women and the unmarried men. You don't see polygamy in societies where woman have real mobility and rights. (UT is a bit insular, so I am not counting that.)

***
If polygamy were made legal, how many people would jump into relationships of that sort, of their own free will? Come on.

Well, in the northwestern part of my state (as well as Utah), there is an enclave of alleged polygamists. Further, there are parts of the Muslim world where polygamy is accepted.

I think many of the opponents of gay marriage used your same argument that it "ignores human nature". You say that polygamy is unfair to women and unmarried men. However, if a woman wants to be in a polygamal marriage, why should society prevent it, even if it does turn out that only a small minority would choose this path? Should a woman want her mobility (and I'd guess she'd also prefer a monogamous marriage), why would the presence of polygamal marriage suppress that mobility? If a single man's best opportunity for a female relationship resides in a polygamal marriage, well--he'll know what to do. I don't see how that makes anything unfair.

My larger point, rather than arguing for polygamy, is: If we've begun to accept gays and are past our moral objections to their lifestyles, why do we persist with these same objections to other lifestyles?

Men and women are different. There is a wide spectrum but even the most masculine woman is generally far more feminine than the most feminine man (and vice versa). We can argue nature vs. nurture all you want but men and women are different (certainly by the time they could have children.)

For the good of society it's important for children to be properly socialized. And that means learning to cope with and relate to the differences between men and women. The most effective way for that to happen is the full time simultaneous attention of a man and a woman - i.e. parents - while growing up.

Single parent households tend to have a woman as the head of household and the problems faced by the children, particularly the sons, are well documented. The sons need that father figure because the mother has no clue what it's like to go from being a boy to being a man. How is she supposed to guide that process? (I promise you my wife has no clue what's going on in my son's head, she thinks she does but she doesn't, and conversely my daughter puzzles me completely). We are finally coming to understand that single parenthood is a situation to be avoided if possible.

Homosexual women are not men and homosexual men are not women (regardless of jokes to the contrary.) Two homosexual women raising a son can no more meet his socialization need than one heterosexual woman. (If one of the two works for earned income and the other stays home they are certainly more capable of meeting his financial need.)

Furthermore, historically, all cultures recognize the difficulty and obligations of parenthood and have responded by giving the parents special rights as compensation. For example, spousal health benefits were originally granted based on the assumption that the woman is exclusively involved in the full-time job of raising children and therefore cannot earn her own.

I have no problem with gays living together (two gay men live down the street from me and no one's burned their house down) BUT when it comes to raising kids, our govenment policy should favor the prescription that tends to properly socialize the kids.

That includes reserving the parental benefits for actual parents. If it were up to me the DINKs (dual income no kids) wouldn't get them either because they haven't met their part of the social contract upon which the granting of parental benefits are based.

p.s. I'm adopted and it would be unfair to impose on a child the issues associated with gay "parents" when so many non-gay parents are available.

I see that polygamy has snuck into the debate. Look, I'm a byproduct of polygamy (my grandmother was a concubine in old world China) and the third generation of I and my cousins are left as 24/7 counselors to our parents who still mull and stew over the trauma of it all. To keep the wives from ganging up against him, grandfather deliberately pitch the two sets of wives and children against eachother. You hear this all the time in Morman groups that still practice polygamy. Whether or not it is "human nature" to collect wives is not the point. The goal is a functional society and a dysfunctional family is hardly the place to start.