The other big indicator by the way is culture.

There are two kinds of ways to raise your child... and often times this can create the biggest gaps of all.

The problem is, there is no way to legislate this.

Basically parents who control their kids summer break, by making them read, taking them to museums etc... end up coming back to school with a huge gap between them and students who are left to their own devices by their parents to watch TV etc.

There is no real way to legislate people to have interest in their child's education. Getting rid of school breaks, or reducing it to a month at most might help too.

If you have a religious wedding, you have your big wedding ceremony at home or at a church, and then you go fill out your legal marriage paperwork at a courthouse so that the government will recognize it.

The big religious wedding ceremony part is optional.  The courthouse part is not.

I was married in a courthouse, and in my neighborhood there are gay churches that gladly performed gay marriages when it was legal in California.

And I'm a legally married atheist.  If you want marriage to be a religious ceremony, straight atheists are worse than religious gays.

Sure. Gay people should be able to get married.

They should be entitled to be miserable for the rest of their lives just like straight people.

Of course yes!

Just want to point this out, because I never liked this way of thinking.

You have equal rights. I am not gay, and I can't marry a man either. You are gay, but you can still marry a woman. Thus we both have the same rights. That makes them equal.

We just both have less rights then we should. Both of us should be allowed to legally form a union with a man, even if I never chose to exercise that right.

I bring this up, because I hate the terms "gay rights", "women's rights", "minority rights" and so on. They are human rights. We all get them.

As far as government rights in the US, they should not.

The problem is we took a religious institution, and used it to form laws. The Christian marriage is between a man and a woman. I am an atheist, but I still think it's wrong for government to tell a christian church that they have to do something there bible tells them is wrong.

So, the best way to solve it is to disconnect the religion from the law, and thus remove the emotional element from your rights. You and the person you love should be afforded the same government advantages as me and the person I love. Period. To do otherwise, is a violation. If you find my first post, you will see that I think all Marriage in the eyes of government should not matter. Not just gay marriage.

That way, you can go to the court house in any state, sign up for civil unity (just like I would have to do), and then go find a religious institution that will marry you, if you feel that's important.

The second part you and your boyfriend can still do today. The government can not stop you from being married. They just don't have to recognize it.

Another thing I am in favor of, is just removing civil unions all together. Why does marriage mean anything to government?

"You have equal rights. I am not gay, and I can't marry a man either. You are gay, but you can still marry a woman. Thus we both have the same rights. That makes them equal."

Dumbest thing I've ever heard.

You have the right to marry your life partner, a gay person does not, therefore NOT equal.

This works only if one thing were true: that all gay people choose to be gay. Since that statement clearly isn't true (I'm willing to be exhibit A if needbe), that means that there is a difference in our rights. As Seece said, you can marry who you love. We can't. Nor can we "love" a member of the opposite gender to get married to. Sure, we could marry that way, but what good would it do? We'd not be happy together- because that's not who we truely want to be with. I'd love to be able to call it "human rights", but alas, the seperation of so many things means that we are first fighting for our rights, "gay rights" in this case, just to be seen as equals in the law. Once we are truely equals, then I could see calling it human rights. Or I guess we could call it human rights... in the case of the lack of them- we're not seen as equal to a "normal" human.

Another thing I've seen in this thread, not related to the above post, is use of the word marriage. I'll say flat out- I have no problem ripping it out of all legal context. This way, the religious people can have their "sanctity of marriage" (though I would argue there are more damaging things to it that they ignore), and every couple can have legal recognition under the law. Call it whatever; I'm not a stickler for names. If anything, I've always felt that "church and state" were not truely seperated here. Bring us a step closer, and a step to people being able to be who they truely are and how they want to be. That latter part is still mired up in the religious parts of law... but that's another topic for another thread...

Why am I saying gay men should have all the rights they want, and am getting bashed by gay men?

guys "gay marriage" is not about a ceremony or doing it at a church

ita about civil rights...... we or I just feel left out from all straight humanity cuz we cant do what straights do 

and the sad this is that we are humans too and we should have those rights 

HUMAN RIGHTS