True, entitled 100%. She's still a bigot for having that opinion though and certainly didn't deserve to win.

Explain why being intolerant of the intolerant is a bad thing?

Excuse me?  How is someone a bigot for agreeing with the majority of Americans and the VAST majority of humans worldwide?

Because the amount of people who support something has nothing to do with it's validity? Do you know what a logical fallacy is? You're using one, it's called ad populum. It doesn't matter how many people believe it. 

I have a serious, SERIOUS problem with governments anywhere that persecute gays, attack gays, or dont offer gays the same legal and economic entitlements that are offered to heterosexual couples.  But marriage is an entirely different beast.  For MILLENIA it has been the union of a man and a woman.

Who cares? I don't. There's no reason to inhibit gay marriage just to protect someone elses flawed concept. 

There is no sense in pretending that it has always been pretty.  There have been marriages for war, diplomacy, money and sex.  But at it's core marriage is and has always been about a man and a woman loving eachother formally recognising that fact before their peers and in many cases before their religion.

No. At 'it's core' marriage, was and always has been, a way to bind people legally, socially, or religiously. In our country it's a legal thing, so it should be defined as such. There's no secular argument against gay marriage that makes sense, there's no reason they shouldn't be allowed. They deserve equal right to marry someone they are attracted to, either both gay and straight marriages are called marriages, or they're both called civil unions.

  I might add, that marriage exists largely because of the support of religious infrastructure of all creeds, the same infrastructures that proponents of gay marriage are now attempting to silence and label as bigots.

Marriage exists because it's of benefit to people who are married. Gay people want the same benefits, and they want it to have the same name. It's only fair. As for people who are against that, they are bigots. Or maybe I should use a different word? Is assholes better? Douchebags? No, I'll stick with bigot.

I have every support for civil unions or equivelant economic and social contracts for gay and lesbian couples.  We as a society should not deny those benefits too people simply because of their sexual orientation.

Good.

But in my opinion, anyone that simply cannot understand why supporters of marriage as it has always been find the idea of gay marriage wrong or offensive needs to make an effort to re-examine the many perspectives of this issue.

I understand them, but their postition is illogical. They're trying to protect silly ideas, and there's no need to.

Anyone that feels they DO understand why supporters of gay marriage are offended and feel that it is simply because they are bigots, needs to realise their hypocracy,

I disagree. I'll call a bigot a bigot. You, just like the bigots you are supporting and defending, are doing so based on illogical reasons. 

The Ghost of RubangB said:
Marriage was created as a sexist institution to exchange property from one man to another without the woman being able to own property on her own. This existed before the Abrahamic religions and before the American government. That is "traditional marriage." If you want to allow churches to dictate marriage laws, then you are choosing sides and making us a theocracy.

Marriage has evolved many times in many ways in many places, and will continue to evolve, and religions don't have a copyright on the idea. Traditionally, most western cultures have at some point allowed one man to have several wives, because they were also traditionally considered property. Marriages have also traditionally been performed to create alliances and peace treaties. The Catholic Church didn't even recognize marriage as a sacrament until the 12th century. In early America, if a woman's husband died, and there were no living male relatives to get all the property, and she got the house and the land and the money (this was very rare, since they would prefer to give it to any brother, father, or cousin they could find), they would call her a witch and kill her. (If we let women own land, we might have to let them vote, and that was a really scary idea back then.)

Everything you have said up too here is either something I agree to be true, or something I lack the knowledge to negate.  However none of it has the remotest relevance to the topic being debated.  I'm the first to concede (and I already did in this thread) that marriage doesn't have the prestigious history we would want for it.  But in theory it has always been about the love between a man and a women.  And whether it has functioned properly or inproperly in that regard or not, all your history lesson has proven is that it has always, ALWAYS functioned as the union of a man and a woman, for good or bad.

As far as the American government is concerned, marriage needs to be legal for everybody or illegal for everybody. The churches can decide whether or not to recognize certain marriages, but they shouldn't have any power to get the laws changed so they get special treatment. This would be done the same way different Christian churches won't recognize divorces in the same way the government does.

Everyone under US law is equal.  Some people are just happier with the rights they are granted than others.  Let's be clear.  Homosexuals are asking for more rights.  Rights noone (at least no society of note) has had since the dawn of civilisation. 

In the U.S., the majority is not supposed to have power to vote away the rights of the minorities. That's where majority rule ends and becomes tyranny, and is one of the reasons we have a Supreme Court to stop the majority when they go mad with power. There are still people who think blacks and whites marrying each other is some gross unholy sin, and there was a time when they were the majority and that was the law. Those laws weren't repealed until the Supreme Court got rid of them in 1967, with the Loving v. Virginia case. I believe that's how the gay marriage issue will end up, and then in 40 years kids will look back at gay marriage laws and think they were as ridiculously ancient and unfair as anti-miscegenation laws.

Or maybe we should all fondly remember the wise words of Virginia judge Leon Bazile from 1965, 2 years before the Supreme Court overturned his decision: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

I dont understand what on earth the race debate has too do with gay marriage.  What I will point out is the beauty of the fact that marriage between a man and a woman played a part in healing the race divide.

You're not treated like a second class citizen in this respect.  There is a great misconception amongst some people in this thread that homosexuals have less rights than heterosexuals.  This is false.  I as a heterosexual man have the right to marry any heterosexual woman that will have me and is not already married.  A homosexual man has exactly the same right.

They don't have the right to marry someone they're attracted to. Your argument is false, they don't have equal rights.

 Equally, neither of us have the right to marry another man, even if we were so inclined.  Our rights are exactly equal.

See above. You have the right to marry someone you're attracted to, gay people don't. 

What supporters of the homosexual marriage movement are advocating are in fact more rights.

False.

This is a massive simplification, but think of attempting to gain access to a women's club. For whatever reason, you really wish to join the club.  They have nice facilities, a pool, and a buffet.  But the club wont let you in without an enormous fight.  Even if you get in, it will probably not be due to them changing their minds, but due to the modern powers of the day (the courts for example) overriding the old institutions that set up that womans club.

There's a difference between a private club and a legal contract. Clubs are allowed to discriminate if they're privately owned businesses, but the government should not be allowed to prohibit gay people from marrying someone they're attracted to.

Regardless of whether you eventually get in or not, why haven't you asked yourself, do you really want to be part of a club that doesn't want you as a member?  To fall under the dominion of an institution that doesn't want nor ever intended for you to fall within it's boundaries in this instance? (that being marriage)

But perhaps most obviously, why have you not realised that across the street is a different club featuring identical facilities, under a different name and a different institution? (that being civil unions) One set up to protect your rights, in such a way as too not spit in the face of the traditions the members of the women's club have spent so long building?

Marriage isn't a club, it's a right. Bad comparison.

How about before he does that, you take a gander at my posts.  For my mind, HappySquirrel has successfully highlighted the fact that you are intolerant.  But you have not displayed for him why someone who disagrees with gay marriage is intolerant.

I've responded to your posts. 

Instead you simply revert to your belief that no well-constructed argument you have seen was based on anything other than cultural or religious bias.  First of all I will point out that if an argument is well-constructed, it shouldn't matter what cultural forms it evolved from, as all arguments are founded in a bias.  But secondly, I will point you in the direction of my previous posts.

You tell me why gay marriage shouldn't be allowed. What bad will it do, besides mental harm to those with bigoted views?