Now, granted that gets a bit cloudly lately; Until just recently, insurance companies, for example, weren't owned by government.

But your question as phrased reveals rather a lot... more, I think than you intend, about what you think the role of government should be/is.

Let insurance companies and employers etc decide what kinds of relationships they'll respect.

Do you think the employers/insurance companies should be able to deny benefits to the spouses in a heterosexual marriage if they feel like it?

Equal protection under the law, you know...

And the fact that this was done through an overwhelming vote of representatives accountable to the people rather than by judicial fiat makes the outcome much easier for opponents to swallow.

Except for, apparently, many of its opponents around here...

Disingenuous? Not even a whit!

On the contrary, unless you would care to explain how legalizing same sex marriage is similar to legalizing pedophilia...

re: graywolf | April 7, 2009 | 11:14 pm

Is it sodomy in general that freaks you out, or just sodomy among gay men? If it is the first, will you be leading the charge to make it illegal? If it is the second, perhaps you should just mind your own business...

An interested party sez...
""That would certainly explain why you would make such a disgusting and disingenuous comparison as legalizing same sex marriage to legalizing pedophilia...""
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Disgusting? certainly!... Disingenuous? Not even a whit!

Oh for Christ's sake, give it a rest. Look to the many beams in your own eye--while you're groping around for the first stone.

lol what?

Doing evil the right way is still doing evil.
It's as if rape with a condom is something other than rape because it's been done properly.

Some day there will be an accounting for all of this grave defiance of God, and the legal aspect won't even be mentioned.

Oh for Christ's sake, give it a rest. Look to the many beams in your own eye--while you're groping around for the first stone.

You're all class, James.

Removing Marriage from having a legal definition, and make it a religious only ceremony. Let the states define everything as some sort of civil union. That way religions can choose to marry whom they want and whom they don't want without worry of 'interference'

That would be my choice -- and I'm in favor of legalizing same-sex unions. I don't want the government promoting or deprecating any sort of consensual sexual relationship. Let them be simple civil contracts for purposes of child guardianship. Let insurance companies and employers etc decide what kinds of relationships they'll respect.

Some day there will be an accounting for all of this grave defiance of God, and the legal aspect won't even be mentioned.

Loving is a perfectly direct reading of the 14th Amendment, even if one that would not have been approved of by those who passed the 14th Amendment.

Absolutely, James, but as you yourself have acknowledged many times, social norms change. Only an unmovable originalist would argue that if the the ratifiers of the 14th believed that mixed-race marriage was outside pale, then Virginia was well within its rights to outlaw such unions. We would, correctly, disregard their (now widely understood as) benighted beliefs on this subject.

But really, doesn't all this just show that government should get out of the marriage business, period?