10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong (reposting Mitchell Sturges) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans. Re-post this if you believe love makes a marriage.

So you know where I'm coming from, I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but I do know a lot of social conservatives. I'm not religious, but I do go to church because I promised my wife when we got married that I would and that our kids would be raised catholic.

There are actually two parts to the gay marriage debate that I think people get confused. To some extent, people are arguing semantics in this debate and to some extent both sides are right.

The first part of marriage is the religious part. This is sanctioned by organized religion and frankly means whatever organized religion thinks it means. The second part to marriage is what benefits the government attaches to it. These two items are separate and I believe a lot of opposition to gay marriage is because of the first part, yet when faced with the second part I'm not as sure that most people would care.

There are a number of potential solutions, from reframing the debate (people have tried to do it with civil unions), to eliminating all governmental benefits to marriage (never going to happen).

First of all religion is not logical. The foundation of religion is faith, so any arguments based on logic are useless. From my non-religious point of view I believe the religious people have a good point. Their religions are bigoted against gays being married and they are at least reasonably internally consistent about it. If they believe that gay marriage is not part of their religion, then that is for their religious leaders to define. Some feel threatened by gays regardless, but many would be fine with giving out the benefits.

Where I think a majority can be gained is by focusing on government benefits and how government treats married people differently: medical power of attorney, immigration, inheritance, taxes, corporate benefits, adoption etc. This link cites 1138 federal benefits associated with marriage.

Gay marriage is one strategy to get these benefits, but if activists can stay focused on the goal, how else might they achieve the goal without calling gay marriage marriage (or even civil unions). Is it possible to prioritize the benefits and then achieve a majority of the most important ones? Going after gay marriage is an extremely contentious way to go after the benefits.

Now some people might say, we just need to fight the bigots and make it happen. And that is great, meanwhile it is all or nothing and nothing is getting done. Im a big fan of really understanding what you are trying to accomplish and doing whatever it takes to achieve that. If you want recognition and acceptance by society by all means fight the good fight. But if you really just want the benefits associated with marriage then I believe it is a different fight and much more feasible because many (but certainly not all) those against gay marriage are just trying to protect this religious concept called marriage with which they have been indoctrinated.

Here are some examples of options:

Change all federal and state forms and laws to not refer to marriage, but instead to something else, for example, social partner contract. This social partner contract can be between any two unrelated people. This will make it easier at the state level to pass the state recognition of the social partner contract. The key is to not use the word spouse.

Pursue civil unions. Pursuing the abstraction called "gay marriage" is a losing battle because it really brings out the religious nuts. Civil unions goes part of the way there and raises less pushback but the partner is still a spouse which in a lot of peoples minds the checkbox on the federal form still says marriage/spouse.

Focus on individual benefits in priority order and change federal laws to give those individual benefits to people based on a contract in addition to marriage.

Going after gay marriage is a losing battle. You are going after the religious at the core of their base where they are the strongest. You can pretend that allowing gay marriage doesn't attack their religion, but to them it does. Let the religious have marriage and use the constitutional separation of church and state to go after the benefits.