A) Legitimate gay Christian churches are everywhere, and spreading: http://www.gaychurch.org/

B) Not all weddings are religious ceremonies.  They were ways to trade ownership of land, property, and women for thousands of years.  Religious weddings are only one kind of wedding.  Marriages can also be political tools.

C) I don't ask G-d for favors.  Getting married is a social and legal institution just as much as a religious one.

27% of Children live with a single parent.
32% of Children have parents who have been divorced.
The divorce rate in America for first marriage is 41%
The divorce rate in America for second marriage is 60%
The divorce rate in America for third marriage is 73%

The traditional family was destroyed by straight people. Now we have new types of families appearing that are loving and nurturing.

The religion and feeling argument against gay marriage is logically similar to the following:
"Of course, love and care are only acceptable if they are done the way as described in my religion or to my taste."

That's what you say.  However the sociological research and evidence say another thing.

I tend to believe social scientists over forum posters.

The traditional family was destroyed by drugs and the "free love" movement, now it's trying to rebuild and it's bitch ass "scientific" studies that are getting in the way of that. You're quoting all those figures, but I could just as easily say:

73%(minus orphans) of Children live with both parent.
68% of Children have parents who have not been divorced.
The divorce rate in America goes up as the sanctity of marriage is taken more and more lightly.

and I tend to believe that people who believe that social scientists have facts need to take a look in the mirror if they ever think that their convictions are any more valid than people who believe in religion.

Yes, drugs, that's why people get divorced. Your a genius, I can't believe I didn't see it before.

On a more serious note.

A) don't be so damn obtuse. I said drugs and the free love movement. That was a major movement where people started throwing out personal responsibility in a relationship, and that has trickled down into society today.

B) This is exactly my point. it is NOT the government's job to teach us morality. So who does teach morality? Where are you going to get your morality from? Science? I'm sure that'll work out great. You cannot have a society without morals, and since the government cannot teach morality, they need to support those institutions who do.

The reason the divorce rate wasn't always this high was because women weren't allowed to get divorces. The divorce rate increased when we decided that it was sexist and unfair to allow men to dump their wives whenever they felt like it, but not allow women the same freedom. So when you blame the divorce rate's increase on some social movement that you don't like, would you prefer that divorces were illegal or at least much harder to get?

What is the sanctity of marriage when people like Britney Spears can get a joke marriage as long as she's straight and gay people can't get a serious marriage that will last more than one weekend?

A) I would personally say the thing that destroyed the traditional family was the womans rights/feminist movement. It changed so strongly the role of a wife/mother.

B) It is not the governments job to support morals or to support institutions that do. It is the governments job to support rights and uphold the law.
Now this issue is both a moral issue and an issue of rights, morally it seems wrong to some people that homosexuals should marry, however to say that cannot is clearly discrimination against them. It is the governments job to make sure that this discrimination does not happen.

Many other issues that were decided by these 'morals' have since been overturned and seem ancient and wrong to us. Inter-racial marriage is the one most strikingly similar to homosexual marriage but there are plenty of other examples, especially concerning the rights of everyone who wasn't a white male. In general morals are not a good way to decide a law.

Also you seemed to imply that atheists are immoral. You're blatantly wrong there, we just find morality in a different way. Personally I find my morality by thinking of the impacts of my actions upon my life and the lives of others, not because God is waving a giant smite hammer over my head.

So if the problem was sexism, why didn't we just go the other way and say guys couldn't get divorced either? Personally, yes, I would prefer if it were more difficult to get a divorce. maybe people would be a little more cautious abotu getting married in the first place then.

you think I somehow approve of brittany spears? She's an entirely seperate problem. Just because a bunch of pigeons have shit over my car doesn't mean I don't have a right to chase off any more pigeons that come by while I'm trying to clean my car off.

@Rath - I agree about the femenist movement issue, not that I don't think women should have equal rights, but that it was handled the entirely wrong way. Men could act like assholes in a relationship and women couldn't, but rather than push for laws that restricted men from being assholes teh same as women, they just said "hey, we wanna be assholes too!"

and what do you think the purpose of a law is? It's a guideline for the proper functioning of a society, which is comprised of morality, which is the guidelines for an individual to function in a society. You can't say that one has nothing to do with the other.

Also, I don't assume that aethiest have no morals, but you seem to think that the morals of a religious person are only based on fear and are somehow invalidated by this erroneous assumption.

You never hear actual gay people saying "its a choice" its always straight people who say that, apart from the few uncle toms who have supposedly been "cured" of homosexuality. People tell themselves homosexuality is a choice in order to justify their own bigotry to themselves.