This entire issue has become a pet peeve of mine. As a single male of advancing years with a, shall we say, sometimes less than macho demeanor, I have been mistaken many times in my life for a homosexual, and have indeed had gay friends and considered myself for years to be pretty progressive on the issue of homosexuality.  What I have most decidedly never been is a homophobe.  Indeed, the term itself is sort of ridiculous, and I think it good to clarify that not only do I not fear homosexuals, in most cases I actively enjoy them as people.  I don't have to like their sex habits, and I don't have to care.  So for years, I didn't care.  Live and let live, right?  It's the American way.

In the last decade, any hint of resistance to the idea of gay marriage has garnered anyone, no matter their previous beliefs or attitudes, the label of bigot by gays who are quite frankly lying when they make the comparison to race and gender to support their political agenda. One does not have a male or female "orientation", or a African or Caucasian or Asian "orientation". Race and gender are physical traits. Homosexuality, whether it is an "orientation" or not, whether it is a choice or not, is expressed as a behavior, and we are none of use required to check our brains at the door when discussing this issue.

I am sick to death of it. Marriage? Benefits? Why? To what possible social goal do we extol the virtues of an abnormal, if not clinically so, sexual orientation or behavior? You can live together, you can have sex together. You can even be married under any spiritual tradition that accepts this for gays. Why the perks? What need for sharing benefits, and why would any sane person want to set themselves up for the inevitable extension of divorce law into their lives should they decide to part?

I think it is nothing more fancy than a direct attack on freedom of religion. By selling this issue as a civil rights issue, leftists (who have been directly involved in the gay rights movement from its inception) hope to place a permanent wedge between the Christian religion, which cannot with any honesty condone homosexuality, and the government.

It's nothing noble. It's the hardball politics of destruction at its utter worst

Gay rights activists claim that marriage is not about family, children, and financial issues unique to men and women.  When you point out that this is in fact exactly what marriage is about, and what it always has been about, they claim that this is a weak argument because it merely appeals to old, tired traditions that have no current use in a modern and enlightened society.

The argument is demonstrably not, "it's always been done that way." No one has shown that there is no longer a need to regulate heterosexual sex and the resultant children in some way to ensure the child is taken care of and the finances are arranged fairly. No one has shown how a gay couple, who will either never have children, or if they do will have them in such a controlled way that they can negotiate every aspect of who takes care of what, is the same as a male and female couple for whom at the very least the role of mother and father are defined during child bearing, and generally speaking beyond that in various tangible ways.

No one has shown how these roles are obsolete. Indeed, despite repetition of the same assertion about marriage changing, no one has really shown any fundamental way that it has.

What has been shown is that many liberals will just repeat the charge, "you are making an argument from tradition."

Appeal to tradition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Study the actual use of this term, "appeal to tradition."  We who oppose gay marriage are not arguing that traditional marriage values were proven right at their inception.We're arguing that marriage by definition has been about kids and finances. Whether or not this was the correct way to go is not necessary to refute the oft stated opinion that marriage has nothing to do with kids and finances.

Now I move on to the assertion that marriage is no longer about kids and finances. Well, in fact, if you look at the laws governing marriage, they are indeed about kids and finances, or more precisely, the laws about dissolving a marriage are about kids and finances.

If we move on to the assertion that marriage is not MOSTLY about kids and finances. Again, looking at the laws governing the institution, all of them are about kids and finances.

How about the assertion, "marriage is also about love and romance." Looking at the laws governing the issue, none of them are about love and romance.

How about, "marriage is a spiritual issue that the government has no business interfering with."

In that case, we look at the laws preventing people from getting spiritual marriages within their own faith traditions. Such laws are nonexistent.

So, we know from the past that marriage was about kids and finances, we know the laws currently on the books, so much as they exist, are about kids and finances, and we know that there are no limits on spiritual marriages.

We know that homosexuals come by their children, if they have any at all, in a functionally different way than heterosexuals, and we know that they have more control over this than heterosexuals do.

We know that homosexuals, as far as gender inequalities are concerned, do not have any legal issues. We know that gender inequalities exist in every heterosexual marriage.

We know that for the most part, homosexuals come into a relationship with independent lives, and leave that relationship equally independent. If there have been any decisions for one to, for example, sacrifice career and stay at home, this is fully negotiable between them, and any financial issues can easily be negotiated along with such decisions. We know with heterosexual couples, no matter how hard they may wish it to be otherwise, women are always going to be the ones getting pregnant, and men are by extension more often going to be the ones in a situation to maintain an uninterrupted career. We know that women still make less than men on average, and sometimes even make less than men for doing the same job.

We know from psychology that men and women fulfill different roles in a heterosexual family. We know homosexuals will not be able to fill those roles. One of the two will be excluded.

Everything we know from antiquity to the present dictates that there are indeed differences between gay and heterosexual couples as they pertain to living together, having a child, raising that child, and separating from one another. There are actually almost no similarities between gay couples and heterosexual couples other than the fact that they have sex and feel emotions.

This is not what the law concerning marriage is about.

Add to that the atrocious damage done to our society by high divorce rates brought on by sexually libertine behavior introduced from the exact same political influences as the ones now pushing gay marriage, and what I see is a big, flashing red warning sign stating, "DO NOT ENTER".

We've been here before. We've actually been here dozens of times over the past few decades where divorce, sex, porn, and other moral issues related to sex have been sold to us as progress, and instead have done great damage.

In response to this, what we often hear is, "well, that's just an argument from tradition," from people who do not use the phrase in the same way as it has traditionally been used.

I think the traditional understanding of what an argument from tradition is holds.

This is only the most recent step in a trend that has been going on all my life.  Stop blaming the blacks and the gays and the Jews.  Stop blaming the white, effete liberal elite.  It is the natural outcome of your own hatred of God.

If you acknowledge a higher power, you also acknowledge you are not that power.  Liberals have a very clear and demonstrable record of denying precisely that power, and this denial expresses itself in their willingness to flaunt the will of the governed for the sake of enslaving us all bit by bit.  Had you truly any concern about this attack on God and all that is decent, we would not be here right now.  Where have you all been for the last 50 years?

Whether homosexuality is a choice or not, whether it is genetic or not, whether it is a "mental illness" or not, it is filthy sexual behavior not to be tolerated in decent society.  There's your first mistake.  You sat by and let it happen because you have no sense of urgency when it comes to defending common decency and even the most basic morality.  After all, you celebrated quite enthusiastically the rise of pornography and the skyrocketing rate of divorce and illegitimacy.  Certainly the wholesale slaughter of millions of unborn babies did not rouse you to decisive action.  What did you think?  That after normalizing one of the most historically denigrated and debased forms of sexual perversion, the liberals were going to stop there?  When have they ever stopped pushing for more and more filth?  The filthier and more helpless the population, the more government programs are needed to "help" (control) the population.  Where were the mass demonstrations?  Where is the new political party that will stand for both working people's livelihoods AND working people's values?  It's certainly not in THIS Republican party.

Ultimately, you have no one but yourselves to blame.  The same lack of concern for common decency that characterizes the economy of this nation -- the glorification of the rich, the worship of Mammon -- that led directly to the economic debacle we are now living through, is the exact same lack of concern for decency that leads to the exaltation of perverse sex to the level of a civil right.  You've had decades to take a real stand both in terms of economics and in terms of moral decency.  The liberals are outworking you.  They have a united cause -- indecency in both economics and culture.  You seem to enjoy picking and choosing which forms of decency you will stand for, and which you will let slide.  You don't really care, or this would simply not be true.

And, since you do not care about right and wrong enough to fight for it at every turn, you lose the privilege of living in a society that benefits from the natural outcome of doing things correctly.  Worse is coming.  Just keep sitting on your duffs and wait for it -- it's coming.  The plight of the North Koreans is not something that cannot happen anywhere else.  It will become the way of the entire world.  All you have to do is keep sitting there like lumps, and let it happen.  It most assuredly will.