Some idle thoughts of my own -- not entirely on topic:
"Love" is a very private thing, sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse, often both; "marriage" is a public declaration of commitment to a union with another person -- for mutual support, for sharing of property, for raising of offspring... Because marriage is "social" in nature, all manner of rules and regulations have arisen to govern all aspects of it -- from the initial pairing, right through to the eventual ending though death or separation or divorce. (As Glance pointed out, theren are always ulterior motives to these rules, and they are not always benevolent!)
So: do I have any problem with "gay marriage"? With gay marriage, no. With marriage -- as a legal institution --, yes.
Often, the public debate around whether to allow gay marriage skirts the supposedly moral issue and cuts right to the chase: property rights, pension rights, death benefits, inheritance, tax benefits, and so on. All the legal baggage. I'd like to see the legislators taking a close look at these issues for all marriages. I question, not whether we should "deny" some of these benefits to gays, but whether we should be extending all of them to anyone. Some are probably good; some are probably outdated relics that should be revised or scrapped.
Gay stereotypes: When I see some gay jerk feeding the flames of negative image, I remind myself of an intelligent, gracious man and brilliant actor: Sir Ian McKellen, who wrote in 1996:
[color:"orange"]There is a fantasy as old as the modern gay rights movement, that if all our skins turned lavender overnight the majority, confounded by our numbers and our diversity and recognising a few of our faces, would at once let go of prejudice for evermore.[/color]
