EY: Jonerik: how do gays devalue the institution of marriage? Why shouldn’t gays who do wish to get married be able to participate in the institution? How does it devalue the institution of marriage to have gays included in the institution? It says something that gays want to participate in the institution of marriage.

What has always seemed ironic to me, is that gays are often criticized for being promiscuous, but then the same people who criticize gays for being promiscuous want to deny gays access to the stabilizing institution of marriage.

And don’t we owe it to our gay citizens to give them a legally sanctioned, difficult to dissolve relationthip recognition?. It helps them get over the rough spots of any marriage, rather then simply moving out in a hothead moment. In our 41 years, yes we’ve had our differences, but we cool down and go back to the business at hand. And stabilizing gay relationships will help end the spread of STDs, It will also do the same, by setting an example for all the hetero couples who live in a “for the moment, till a couple fights occur” unmarried relationship. Or are just in the “next partner mode – next thrill” all the time.

Something I learned long ago in the sales business is that embarrassment is the greatest driver for or against sales of big ticket items in a corporate environment. Remember the old adage about you can’t go wrong by buying computers from IBM?

And that is what the conservative churches fear – they will be shown to be on the wrong side of history, and like in Europe, church attendance will plunge, and with it the money and power goes away.

And re the old “marriage is for kids” argument. Well, we are empty nesters, obviously incapable of producing any more kids. Should our marriage be automatically annulled, given that our children are now alld in their 30’s?

JonEriks post is well thought out. And he is well on his way to realizing that gay relationship recognition is good for gays, it is good for str8s, and it is good for our nation. Just going to take a little more time, JonErik, And I think you’ll fully see the light, the meaning of tying together ly (nothing re forcing churches to do marriages against their dogma) gay couples legally, and making them full citizens in our society. With all the legal benefits and responsibilities for maintaining a relationship which is difficult and painful to dissolve.

And lets all remember what we all said so many times in school – that paragraph that ended with the words “…..with liberty and justice for ALL”. It didn’t say ” only for those who conform to teachings of particular churches”. Something about religious freedom, including that churches cannot impose their religious beliefs on others. And btw we belong to two churches – both of which support gay marriage. And we had the guts to leave the backwards looking churches of our past. And are so happy for it. And our wonderful gay friends as well.

It’s true that if same-sex marriage is legalized, heterosexual couples will not implode or wake up to some different world. The world we are in has already changed so that this issue is openly and seriously being considered by responsible people. But i think we need to consider how we got here and what the implications of recognizing “same -sex marriage” are before we take further steps down that road.

I won’t deny that our lax civil, secular society has allowed things to drift into this. But generally, most people still accept that men and women need to be married to live together in long term relationships. I think the polls Andy cites points to this. One of the implications we should be considering is what further erosion or devaluation of marriage as an institution or regulator of long term relationships between men and women are we willing to accept. No matter how many ways the courts and legislatures think they can say otherwise, marriage as an institutional force is a legally sanctioned means of regulating relationships between men and women. From my personal experience, I don’t think men and women can stand one another enough to be in a long term relationship any other way than that society makes it difficult to get out of. That’s what marriage as an institution or institutional force does. “For the sake of the children” as they say but laws of inheritance and property have been written to underscore this high price for dissolving a marriage. Divorce is messy, ugly and expensive for those who go through it. No-fault has not changed that. It just changed the issues.

But men and women still decide to take the risk of divorce and get married. I assume most people get married to a member of the opposite sex because they are in love and often because they want to reproduce children. But also because marriage as an institution defining the long term relationship between a man and woman has also defined the social pressures men and women feel to not try to live together outside of marriage.

We have no experience with “gay marriage.” Will gay men or gay women feel the same stigma to simply living together without benefit of matrimony as hetero men and women? I’m betting that most gays will not feel any pressure to getting married but will remain single in serial or multiple relationships of whatever sort. What you have done by declaring “marriage” the same as between two men or two women as it is between a man and a woman is devalue marriage as an institution and a regulator of human relationships.

The whole issue of gay marriage has not been around long enough for most people to consider the implications of this to society other than the usual religious moral ones which often come off as sounding bigoted and gay-bashing. That’s why many people in Minnesota are reluctant to accept it. Unfortunately, most people also feel afraid to express any opinion about it and don’t feel qualified to do so until they have heard others speak about it. I’m not a gay-basher and I deplore the horrific brutalization which gays have suffered at the hands of bigots. But I think there are larger and more profound implications to this issue than have been expressed so far. I think the issue has a lot to say about how men and women relate to one another in long term relationships that we have traditionally defined families. i.e. in terms of blood ties. It is not just about how members of the same sex relate to each other.