"then let's just call you 'no friend of gays,' a group of people you just don't believe deserve the right to marry for whatever reason"

That's just another unfounded ad-hom attack and completely misses the point of what I've written and my considerations for opinions. Your loss.

btw, people like you are a good example of why gay marriage is failing so badly nationwide. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine how the litigation crazy half of the LGBT community could bungle it worse if they hired the RNC to represent them. I hope the wiser half of the LGBT community assert themselves soon for their own good.

Some of your comments like the “gay panic defense” are so absurd I have to wonder if you're an anti-gay troll pretending to be a very poor advocate for gay marriage. If so you’re certainly doing a good imitation.

Regardless, that's the level you're on so we're done. Good night.

I'm really sick of all this discussion about whether or not homosexuality is "normal." It doesn't matter what normal is. That is a complete non sequitur. Most people don't play golf. Does that mean we should ban golf?

The standard we use for almost all other behaviors is harm. Does the behavior cause harm to others? Generally, this bar is set fairly high--the behavior must clearly cause harm. You can badmouth someone, unless you lie to intentionally hurt their business, etc. I could, and in fact do, make an argument that golf causes harm and should be banned--it uses toxic chemicals, causes harmful runoff, uses too much water. You would have a hard time showing that any particular gay marriage causes direct harm to anyone. By the standards we normally use in society, gay marraige should be legal, golf should be illegal.

And make no mistake, legalizing a behavior, in this case marriage, for one group and not another is a ban.

ALL arguments against gay marriage are religious arguments. It doesn't take long before the Bible gets quoted. But one of the founding principles of our society is separation of church and state. Does the Bible say homosexuality is wrong. Fine. But if that is then used to say marriage can be between a man and a woman but not two people of the same gender, then marriage needs to leave the public realm.

I am actually fine with the idea of the government getting out of the marriage business altogether. Let churches decide who can to get married with their blessing--a purely symbolic, religious act--and let any two consenting adults sign an exclusive civil union with each other.

And if we're trying to prevent people from harming kids, why not ban repressive religious upbringings? I mean, a lot of psychiatrists would go out of business in the long term, but the overall benefit to society would be tremendous. Oh, wait, we want to keep big government from running people's lives, isn't that it?

..Stepparents are found to have much higher rates of. abusing children than natural parents are. Therefore, because raising children with a stepparent or an adoptive parent is not the ideal, I propose that we outlaw it...

That's a rather silly premise to justify gay marriage. Which isn't to say gay marriage can't be justified, just that certainly isn't it.

How do you get from allowing foster parents as admittedly secondary choice to the conclusion that gay marriage should be endorsed as equally preferable to biological dual parenting? When gay marriage by nature demands one or more foster parents in every case.

Sorry, there's no equivalency there. Equivalency arguments will continue failing because there are undeniable major differences between homosexual and heterosexual parenting as we know it today.

The faith based assumption there is certainly nothing to be concerned about is no more valid than faith based assertions it's certainly a bad thing. These things can go either way. “Miscegenation” turned out not to be a concern and is now generally accepted world wide, where as other things like radical feminist opposition to fathers as part of a counter-culture reinvention of the family turned out to be very wrong and is not encouraged anywhere I’m aware of.

People like to cite the experiments that went thier way and forget the one's that didn't.

The only rational pro-gay marriage argument is that LGBT parents are different, but not substantially so and still good parents on average. If true it should be provable over time. However, that can't really be proven now only asserted ideologically or anecdotally.

Again, that's one of many reasons why civil unions make sense now to provide necessary services and legal protections to LGBT parents and children, and to allow society to take another more productive look at gay marriage down the road.

I certainly agree with Sara Miles concerns about the pathetic decision by the New York court. But the decision should give heterosexuals pause too. The majority opinion implies that marriage is for raising children and indirectly that sex is for procreation. Apparently a law limiting marriage to those who wish to raise children would be a "bad idea" but only because it allegedly would require "intrusive inquiries and arbitrary and unreliable line-drawing." It seems to me that following the "thinking" of the majority opinion, anyone having children should be forced into marriage. Although this type of retrograde thinking about who can marry or who must marry likely still has appeal to a segment of the population, I don't think most people would be comfortable with the conclusions that could be reached following further the arguments of the majority.

BTW, if anyone has not read the full decision, I recommend reading it, particularly the articulate, solidly reasoned dissenting opinion of Chief Judge Kaye.

And make no mistake, legalizing a behavior, in this case marriage, for one group and not another is a ban.

That and your presumption there is some clear legal precedent for gay marriage, already there waiting to be discovered; that is a specious argument that doesn't stand up in court.

First you have to establish marriage is a right that should be available to all without any discrimination and is not a privilege.

That fails on several levels.

1) It's never been a right it's always been a state regulated privilege, albeit one given with little reservation to the vast majority of people, but always with certain constraints for age, gender, and number of partners; and thusly always a privilege decided by popular consensus.

2) If one asserts that marriage is a universal right and the state has no power to regulate or constrain it whatsoever, then it’s fair to raise the issue of polygamy for example, as a universal right means exactly that. Otherwise one must accept that the state does set constraints, whether it be on gays or heteros or polygamists or whatnot and therefore the merits of each circumstance must be argued. Hetero marriage is established law, others are not, so there is a different burden of proof under legal tradition. Sorry, but that’s legal reality and otherwise there would never be decided law.

3) What constitutes the "good" in any political issue is always hotly debated on everything from driver's licenses to welfare to military spending and everything else. Everybody thinks they have a right to be right, and such appeals are basically worthless legally as they're fundamentally political.

4) Comparisons to other civil rights is a political argument, NOT a legal one. Mistake the two and get nothing but calamity just as the LGBT community has unfortunately done over the last several years.