Reply #2: well in some cases two people of the same sex

[sui generis]

can't hold joint residential mortgages already . . .

I'm for civil marriage, when "marriage" is recognized by the government as conveying the rights of kinship, parental rights, property, and mutual financial liability, including taxation.

The very fact that a meaningful "civil union" (as differentiated from one man / one woman marriage) would require language that bars people of the opposite sex from being in a civil union is absurd, and the fact that the federal government and other states aren't required to recognize civil unions makes it a moot point.

The "tradition" of marriage requires nothing except that it be one man and one woman.

Not that they be in love with each other, not that the marriage not exist only to preserve wealth, or that both parties are confirmed heterosexuals willing to produce children for the purposes of the state, including serving in a peacetime draft or paying into social security for 74 years or longer before being able to benefit from it.

Today, traditional marriage, when defined as ONLY between a man and a woman implies that traditional marriage is interested only in procreation, and when the government takes that stand it sinks to the level of animal husbandry.

Civil marriage is NOT about love. It is about fiscal commitment and designation of heirs. At the end of the day civil marriage is the only rational direction to take.

It has absolutely no impact on traditional marriage which will continue to take place in churches everywhere as it always has, and it has no impact on gay people. No gay person is going to run out and marry someone of the opposite sex just because they want to be married so badly, and no straight person is going to run out and marry someone of the same sex thereby causing the end of civilization, so allowing same sex civil marriage is not going to impact western civilization one way or another, and the subjective "morality" arguments and civil marriage do not even belong in the same arena.

Gay people will continue to have gay lives and gay families with or without the protections of marriage; it's just as utterly absurd that the government would single someone out to not be married because they're gay, or because they have green eyes, or because they prefer italian food.