A quick thought about marriage.

Personally, I feel government should not be in the "business" of marriage. That is a relative new development, starting in about 1850ish in the US. Before then, marriage was strictly the providence of the church. The other problem is that the federal government has left the question to be defined by the the states. Therefore the laws surrounding marriage change each time you cross a state border.

Let's be honest about it. Modern argument for or against marriage is about tax law, family law, family benefits and property. In other words, its all about the money. Personally, I'd rather all marriage laws be struck down. That said:

The problem with this debate is that I have yet see it argued properly from either side. Most of the proper argument against gay marriage boils down to this:

Our *SOCIETY* defines marriage as *ONE* man and *ONE* woman. Don't believe me? Try and pass a ballot to change that definition in your state. Even in the *VERY* Blue state of Oregon, a law to allow gay marriage failed at the polls. Until you change the minds of the majority of Americans this is going to continue as truth.

Does that definition violate the civil rights of gays? Probably one of my own pet peeves is the argument that denying the "right" of a gay man to marry another gay man is just as oppressive as being black was in the 50's and 60's.

Gays have the same rights and privileges as anyone else today, and those rights are protected under the law. Comparing today's oppression of gays to blacks before the civil rights movement insults what that movement did for *EVERYONE*, gays included. They can get married, they just need to marry someone of the opposite sex.

People today, *ALL* people today, are truly equal under the law today. Sure, I'm not going to deny that there still incidents of bigory and what not. That's true for any class of minority. As a whole though, we all enjoy the freedoms and truths that were spoken about durring that period.

So why is gay marriage different? The same question can be asked about all kinds of "illegal" forms of marriage. Why can't I marry my sister? My brother? My Cousin? Why do we have to wait until we are 16? 17? or 18? Why can't I marry Grace and Kelly? What about Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice? Why can't Elizabeth be married to both Ben *AND* Pardner?

There are as many or more reasons as there are questions, but the simple answer is simply: Because it's against the law. If you don't like it, you need to change the law, and to do that you need to convince 50% of the voters that you are right.