But think of the children!

Kung Fu Monkey: D. A. C. M. A:

"As you are well aware, a debate is raging in this country about gay marriage. Specifically , that allowing gay couples the right to enter into the institution of marriage will destroy the Fabric of American Life, in this case the Fabric most likely being a rough cotton blend, not too comfortable lest there be some accidental pleasurable friction in your Satan's Playground Spots.

This sociological approach is the only remotely viable (and yet still fatally weak) argument against gay marriage -- it cannot be opposed on any reasonable grounds in a civil rights sense. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, gay marriage neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Two gay people getting married in my general vicinity do not change my legal rights. They do not affect my earning potential, they do not raise my taxes, they do not infringe on either my rights to certain freedoms or opportunities to practice such freedoms. They do not, in a negative way, affect the legal status of other marriages. Divorce case law and evolving property law defines my legal relationship with my wife far more than any other factor. The 'slippery slope' argument will always be there, but again -- case law, people. Legal Armageddon has been predicted from pretty much every sociological and technical advance in the last two centuries. We've limped along. If you can skate past the idea that it's legal in Georgia for a 60 year old man to have sex with a 16 year old girl but not cool for two 30 year old men to share a life insurance policy -- good for you.

One may oppose gay marriage from a religious standpoint, but one's religious rights are not abridged. If one belongs to a religion which opposes gay marriage, then odds are there will not be any gay marriage in your church. Gay people will not paratroop in and occupy your vestry. You will not have to worship with them, change the personal nature of your relationship to God, or even like them.

Kiernan at Crooked Timber tackles a well-known opponent of gay marriage. This Maggie Gallagher is taking the 'marriage is an institution necessary for the functioning of society' road, with the tour bus painted a lovely shade of 'and by marriage I'm going to use what marriage has meant legally for the last hundred years or so and blithely pretend that's the tradition stretching back to the dawn of Western Civilization' primer. The engine for this bus will be the ever popular 'societies make babies and the best way for society to raise babies is through marriage as it's traditionally defined' -- again, the 'tradition' being whatever version of marriage in the history western civilization best fits the argument in each specific paragraph of her essay.

...But accepting the basis of her argument before Ms. Gallagher mangles it in the sales job, let's say I spot her: marriage is a Very Important Institution, and we'll even spot her the why based on whatever shambling argument she constructs. But if one's argument is that Marriage is 'under attack', then I would argue --as Kiernan does -- that no-fault divorce and the cultural acceptance of divorce is a far more devastating 'attack' on marriage."