DOMA and Prop 8. Both History.

[FireIceTalon]

The mistake the federal or state governments made was creating law codes favoring marriage. Some of them discriminate as if spouses are all frail widowers, and other discriminate in that all child bearing exists within marriage.

This is what has always struck me about this whole argument. The wheels were set in motion with the very first law ever written based on marriage, whether it benefited or penalized. Most, if not all, arguments against same sex marriage I've heard seem to be based on religious beliefs, but this is a legal issue. Aren't we supposed to have separation of church and state? I have the answer. Return marriage to what it truly is, a religious institution. Throw out any law that references marital status. Throw out any lawsuit against any entity for refusing to perform a marriage ceremony or provide the venue and services. Problem solved, easy peasy .

I don't think marriage is a religious institution (at least not fundamentally), but rather one based on private property and inheritance of said property, along with the power that comes with it. It is true that in feudal society it was considered against the so-called will of God to be homosexual (and being so back then would probably get you burned at the stake or facing the guillotine if someone found out), which is probably where much of the anti-gay marriage rhetoric in most religious doctrine today stems from. But marriage itself was originally done for purposes of inheritance and the preservation or strengthening of particular bloodlines to private property ownership and power, even well before William of Orange married Mary Henrietta (daughter of Charles I) for such purposes in the mid 1600's. And today, this aspect of the institution of marriage holds true, though naturally the context of it differs under capitalism in a number of respects than in feudalism. It has also been an institution traditionally used by men to assert their social and cultural dominance over women, and thus it plays a major role in patriarchal social structures as well.

I would much prefer to eliminate the institution of marriage entirely - the whole concept is plain silly. If two people love one another, regardless of whether they are gay or straight, why should they have to engage in a particular ceremony to express that love and to be able to reap the benefits of society that those who do not marry cannot? But that is another topic altogether. Marriage is just another artificial social construct, like borders, like countries, nationalities, religions, and to a very large extent, even race, that divides people up into categories as if to differentiate between them, usually in a "normal" or "other" context, with the "others" usually being considered fringe and thus discriminated against or otherwise ostracized in society.