Canada has WMDs

[Chaerophon]

I think that you are missing the point. Marriage is both a religious and a political/symbolic institution. Nobody is forcing the churches nor any religious institution to sanctify the marriage of homosexuals. In fact, there is a passage in the law which makes this very point. However, to exclude them from the political/symbolic right to marry is to declare them second-class citizens. You may hold this very opinion of them; however, it is no doubt on just such underlying assumptions that you do so. The fact remains, homosexuals aren't hurting anybody - the notion of the common nuclear family is well under siege already. The differences between polygamy and pedophilia versus homosexuality are obvious; the former two, by nature of their association, degrade or at least greatly raise the potential for degradation of a class of citizens. Whether moralists approve or not, homosexuality does not create such a relationship of subjectivity. If we are truly free and equal, then who is the government to declare it unlawful to sexually relate with whomever we please so long as the affair is consensual and the participants are adults? Subjectivity should not have anything to do with it. Sounds to me like what you are proposing is exactly the opposite of what you claim - in my opinion, by virtue of the mosaic that is the American cultural fabric (which I dare say doesn't show any more outward variety than does that in Canada), I would deem it a responsibility of the American government, under the ideals upon which the nation is based, that the homosexual lifestyle not be quashed by a tyrrany of the majority.