It's interesting that you appose gay marriage because of how sacred marriage is to religion. Don't you understand that it is just as sacred to people who aren't religious? Marriage is as just a grand a practice to same sex couples as to opposite sex couples. Is marriage only meant for the religious because they've had it longer, or because they feel it is sacred? And why does that mean that others can't have it too, because I guarantee you, the practice of marriage between gays is probably more sacred to them than it is to the religious, because of how much more unique and, excluding a few discriminatory-free months in California, difficult it is to obtain. That actually makes gays more deserving of marriage than heterosexuals, according to your logic.
"Deserving"?
I'm not talking about "deserving", except insofar as every person involved in this -- which means all Americans -- is deserving of respect.
We have this document called the Constitution. In it there's a little piece that says that Congress shall make no law about establishing religion, or prohibiting its free exercise.
Now, we have written into federal law a definition of marriage that is clearly religious in nature.
Consider those items: totally apart from even the existence of gays, there are laws in effect which are so, contrary to the Constitution. That's an item in need of correction, even if everyone in the country belonged to a religion which accepted that definition; the fact that everyone believes in what's being established does not negate the fact that it is established.
Now along come gays, and they want the same benefits and privileges granted to other people under this unconstitutional system. Very quickly we discover who the oppressors in the scenario are: they scream against this inclusion, not on the basis of it being in law, but on the basis of religion. This reveals also that the law is based on religion, because they point to it as being in accordance with divine will.
At this point gays could do two things: one would be to take a step back, realize that their use of this word which is so precious to so many other people might not be well advised, and look for a path which will grant to the oppressors the same respect they seek for themselves; the other would be to say "Fuck them!", and proceed on a path that couldn't be better calculated to insult, offend, antagonize, and incense.
Gays have chosen the second path with astounding regularity, and thus only made things worth. Even before this election, polls showed that a majority of Americans believe two things pertinent to this struggle: that marriage is sacred/religious, and that gays are due the same benefits and privileges that others are getting now.
That first belief takes us back to the original item that the law is religiously based and thus establishing religion. They don't realize that their position really means that all the benefits and privileges ought to be stripped from the law -- unless....
Unless the second belief directly above is integrated into the law, replacing the religious word with something else. Suddenly there would be no constitutional issue, and all would be well.
Almost -- the new definition would have to include any definition of this sort of human bonding that any others might have, too; otherwise, it's just the same situation as before, only modified to have a new group added to the oppressors.
Now to a personal level:
There are indeed already churches and organizations which will perform marriage ceremonies for gays. Were the situation resolved as I describe, they could continue to do so -- as other churches could continue to refuse to do so. But the difference would be that none would require government approval to do so, because all marriage ceremonies of any kind, along with all unions, joinings, handfasting, commitments, or whatever, would be of no importance to the government at all except in this: the
people would tell the
government that they had a valid union, rather than the government telling the people.
That's the way it ought to be. It's also where the other constitutional aspect comes in: freedom of association. Under that, too, the present system is unconstitutional, because it denies a specific sort of association to some people, but not to others.
BTW, you're misreading again, mixing things that are distinct. To say that I "oppose gay marriage" means I oppose the movement to get something called "gay marriage" written into the law. I oppose that because it is just a move to alter what sort of oppression we have, rather than a move toward liberty. It has nothing to do with religion.
Where religion comes in is that the current system is unconstitutional due to religion, and that trying to take away from the religious (their view of it) what is sacred (again, their view) is stupidity both tactically and strategically. Strategically, it's far better to work to get the religious definition and word out of the law, replace it with a neutral one.
