Marriage is slowly becoming less and less religious, although (I hope) no one disputes that it stems from religious practices.

My stand on all these issues is neutral: I don't give a rats ass what someone else does privately. He can screw monkeys in his basement, I could care less. But its not about that anymore; the issue isn't about people letting others lead different lifestyles, its that gays want more.

Many want a 'gay' (homosexual) marriage to be identical to a 'straight' (heterosexual) marriage. My question is: why?

Silke, you mention some 'rights' you claim only heterosexual partners have. While I don't have enough information to contradict you on this, I personally agree with you (although I strongly doubt this is the case. It seems unlikely that a hospital would deny such information to a partner... but whatever).

If these little legal issues were really the problem, whats wrong with a 'civil union' as they call it? You get all the rights you want, (if you don't then you should, so please don't get into details about exactly what laws on civil unions are in place), but you don't get the recognition.

Thats what (I think) this is all about. Recognition. Acceptance. We want the little paper, dammit, so were gonna make a huge ruckus until we get it!

Although this is probably a kind of silly example, brangelina doesn't feel the need to get a marriage. They see it as a formality, and I kind of agree.

Marriage is supposed to be about having kids. Creating a good environment to raise angsty adolescents. Sure, you can argue, gay couples can adopt (as many straight couples do). But in adoption, you need to be extremely careful when you let someone adopt as child. If one were to create a 'parenting test' that determines if a couple can adopt, my opinion is that a large percentage of families - with biological children - would fail, but thats just my opinion. The point is people don't call homosexuals 'perverts' for no reason; regardless of wether you like it or not. And raising a little kid with two mother figures is great; why don't we legalize polygamy. Now you can have 2 mother figures, and a father figure. Perfect? C'mon.

It would be very interesting to one day just legalize all gay marriages, no debate, no discussion, then watch what happens. My money is on people turning up in record numbers to marry, and then in a few years that number drops to close to zero. This issue is about 94% hype.

Also, I kind of doubt these relationships would work out long term. I mean, so many people are divorcing out of 'normal' marriages, whats the rate going to be among homosexuals?

My last point, if I didn't overstay my visit here yet, is that you need to realize the law is never going to be 100% secular, logical, and shiny. There are some things you just don't do, for example incest. You don't need to read the bible to know thats not so clever, and even with birth control, is that such a good idea? Granted, I don't personally care about this, but wouldn't you say practicing this would be the symptom, for lack of a better word, of a mental disorder? What I'm saying is the law will always contain some common-sense things in it. And it kind of should. If you stand for totally removing anything that isn't 100% logical and unsafe from it, you also stand for all kinds of weird and rather stupid things. Keep that in mind.

Oh and,
Quote Originally Posted by Aesop
Another hot topic right now in the U.S. mainly because it's an election year I think.
The kind of obvious (I dunno, it is to me) reason this was brought up was because Bush realized he was getting bashed about everything he talks about; gay marriage is something he thinks he can use to divert attention away from all the bashing. I think at least.