oh my gosh, agreed!

Your position makes absolutely no sense. How is a gay person responsible for any of the problems you list here? They're not. A committed, gay, couple getting married has no effect on any of this.

I'm sorry to inform you that the popularity contest never ends. In my quest to become popular, I will continue to support gay marriage merely as a token of flair. My support for gay marriage is, and continues to be, a tool from which to climb social hierarchies, rather than an issue of equality or human rights.

So explain again, how outlawing same-sex marriage reduces the out of wedlock birthrate, cohabitation, poverty, divorce, et cetera?

Oh, where to begin?
First - just to get it out of the way - my painter/fashion designer friend said his art teacher once told him, singing is one of those artistic talents that's truly inborn and can't be learned. It's a talent you clearly don't have, I'm afraid.

That being said, your argument makes absolutely no sense at all. To summarize, you say we must oppose same-sex marriage because of all the problems with heterosexual marriages.

At best, your argument is illogical to the point that I wonder if you recorded this while drunk. At worst - and this is more likely - it amounts to an attempt to scapegoat gay people as an excuse for denying them access to the rights and privileges that straight people take for granted.

Like many theocrats (or "social conservatives," as you call yourselves), you whine and whimper about being called "hateful" because of your views.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe people call you that because your views and their continued application in our laws are actually destroying the real lives of real people, and yet you either are blind to this or even support it? The New York Times just did a profile of binational same-sex couples who have had to up and leave the country in order to stay together because the American partners, thanks to DOMA, couldn't sponsor their foreign-national partners for green cards. That's just one of the more than 1,100 rights granted by the federal government to married straight couples but categorically denied to same-sex couples. These also include rights like visiting one's partner in the hospital, inheriting a deceased partner's property and so forth (yes, believe it or not, there are numerous, documented cases of a partner in a same-sex relationship suddenly dying, and his or her family showing up, taking everything and barring the surviving partner from attending the funeral, as well as hospitals preventing one person from seeing his or her dying partner in the hospital). Only a fraction of those 1,100 rights can be secured through powers of attorney and wills, but those can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to file and must be carried around at all times - compared with a marriage certificate that costs about $30 and guarantees all those rights anywhere in the country at any time.

Did you know any of this before? If not, then now you do. But if you continue supporting your beliefs despite knowing this, that's what makes you a bunch of homophobic, hateful bigots - it's that you countenance the immense suffering and unfairness visited upon people for no other reason than their sexual orientation (which, despite your firm convictions, is not a "chosen lifestyle).

The fact that you try to turn it around and call US hateful just for pointing this out is the classic logic of an abusive personality. What that shows us is that, whether you're willing to admit it or not, you basically desire to make us suffer.

In the service of this, you show an utter disregard for truth and evidence. Beyond the fact that the common bumper sticker slogan that "children need a mother and a father" is a red herring, scientific evidence simply does not support this - study after study has shown that children raised by same-sex couples do just as well as those raised by opposite-sex couples, if not better. I'm sure that doesn't sit well with you because it contradicts your beliefs, but that doesn't make it false. As the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

You people like to call that "Christian love," but what would you call it if it was being done to you?

I would point out the case of Janice Langbehn and Lisa Marie Pond, a lesbian couple who were vacationing in Florida. After Pond collapsed and was dying in the hospital, the hospital refused to accept medical history information from Langbehn, saying they were in an "antigay" place, and continued refusing to allow Langbehn to see Pond even when she presented powers of attorney.

Regarding wills, if only it were that simple. The problem with sudden death is that it's sudden, unexpected and happens without warning, often before two people who wouldn't have to file a will if they were allowed to marry even think to do so. But I guess that's no big deal to you - we filthy homosexual perverts should simply have to make accommodations for your god-given right to discriminate against us and have to go through all the extra effort to secure a fraction of the rights you can get for the price of a simple marriage certificate.

I would point out the case of Shane Crone and Tom Bridegroom, a couple in California who were together for six years. When the two came out, Shane's parents were supportive, but Tom's were enraged, threatening him with a gun and physically attacking him when he visited home in Indiana. When Tom died in an accident, his mother showed up, collected all of his belongings and left. Tom's family barred Shane from the funeral and didn't mention him in the obituary, and the only way he was able to see him was by secretly visiting his grave.

Given my previous experience arguing with people like you, I'm willing to bet your response will be something like, "Well, they should have done this or that and planned for sudden and unexpected death. It was their responsibility."

Those are only two real-life examples of the kind of damage our inability to marry does, in addition to those cited in the NYT article about binational couples - all of which are situations that would be unthinkable to a married heterosexual couple. But the fact that you chose a metaphor about a tornado ripping a house to shreds says everything. We're not talking about hypothetical tornadoes and houses - we're talking about the real lives of real people that are being ruined to accommodate your animosity toward them.

You can criticize my tone as "hateful" all you want and whine about being called theocrats, bigots, haters, homophobes and anything else. But at the end of the day, what qualifies actions and rhetoric as bigoted are the power and privilege behind them. If you think what I say is hateful, look at all the things groups like the Ms. Hoffman's former internship site the Family Research Council say about us. Peter Sprigg, who regularly appears in major news outlets, has called for us to be "exported" from the country - imagine if somebody with the amount of power and influence he has had said that about blacks, Jews or Christians. If he had, I highly doubt you guys would object to the FRC being listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but because he said those things about gay people - in addition to the countless other inflammatory and defamatory remarks the FRC regularly makes about us - it gets a pass.

I included that quote about science because of the tendency of you people to ignore it, especially when it comes to questions about LGBT rights. There's simply no evidence that supports your belief that legalizing same-sex marriage is harmful, nor does it support your refrain that being gay is a "lifestyle choice," but constantly denigrating us as people living a "lifestyle" and implying that our relationships, by their very existence, are harmful whenever you talk about the supposed dangers of same-sex marriage serves your political goal of making our lives as difficult as possible in the hopes that we'll simply go away.

At the end of the day, we're the ones who can be legally discriminated against in employment and housing in 27 states on account of sexual orientation - not you. We're the ones who are constitutionally forbidden to marry our partners in 30 states - not you. We're the ones whose rights and very dignity are regularly put up to popular vote, forcing us to beg the public just to be treated like human beings - not you.

So you have absolutely no right to accuse me or any other gay person of being "hateful." There's nothing we can say or do that comes even close to the damage that you have done and continue doing to us. As long as you defend this state of affairs and remain willfully blind to the suffering it causes, or even welcome that suffering, you are a homophobic bigot, period.

Here's my boilerplate on polygamy:

Polygamous relationships are historically not equal partnerships. Men subjugate women (or teens), and then would ostracize the younger men (banishing them) so the older men would have access to more women. Polygamy would result in a vast number of men without ever having a chance to find a mate. In addition, our entire legal system (government) would have to be rewritten to account for multiple partner relationships. The same cannot be said for same-sex couples. In California, the only change that had to be made on marriage licenses was 'husband and wife' was changed to 'Party A and Party B'. A very simple solution, that didn't have any effect on opposite-sex marriages.

Even Mormons aren't interested in promoting polygamous marriages. They donated millions of dollars to the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign. If they wanted polygamy legalized they would have supported same-sex marriage, right? That is the basis for your argument: That if you allow one thing to happen then you have to allow everything else to happen. Obviously we're capable of understanding the difference between a relationship between two people and one that isn't. I'm not sure how you can argue that sexual orientation is the same thing as multiple-partner relationships. They are inherently different. I could just as easily argue that if a man can marry one woman, why can't he marry two or three? So the logical thing to do is to ban opposite-sex marriage before it leads to polygamy --- which it already did: polygamy was legal in the U.S. until 1899.

It was a feeble attempt at sarcasm on Right Klik's part.

Theocrats like to compare same-sex marriage to polygamy, bestiality and child sexual abuse because they view them as morally equivalent with a consensual relationship between two adults who happen to be of the same sex. It's only further evidence that their views are fundamentally based on animus.

@RightKlik, I have a couple comments and questions: I noticed you used the phrase "original design" for marriage. What, in your opinion is the original design for marriage? How does one determine the original design for marriage?
I also noticed that one can make wills online as well. Did you know that, even with a will, the surviving partner, absent legal recognition as married, has to pay estate tax. Isn't that at the heart of the DOMA case in front of SCOTUS?
Finally, I'm not sure why you're bringing polygamy into the debate. Whether two people of the same sex can get a marriage license is an entirely different issue from whether or not a marriage license/contract can have more than two persons. If a polygamist wanted legal recognition for their marriages, they would use the same (unsuccessful) legal argument whether or not SSM were legal. Finally, polygamy is legal in a number of countries around the world. They tend to be conservative, religious, and economically under-developed (Afghanistan, Uganda, Mali,etc). None of these countries legalize SSM. All of the countries where SSM is legal are egalitarian, educated, economically advanced, etc. (think Denmark, Canada, Massachusetts). Explain why gay people should advocate on behalf of polygamists (the polygamists can do that on their own) or why legalizing SSM will lead to polygamy.

Continue supporting the institution of marriage despite all the haters that foolishly beleive they aren't hating. They're like the thief that thinks everyone is trying to rob him. They hate anyone that disagrees with them, so if you disagree, you too must be hating like they do. You disagree with their "religion" so they will always hate you. You are absolutely right that marriage lessens the chance of a child being raised in poverty. The children hating on you will never admit that their side's ridiculous idea that a check could replace a husband/father has been an abysmal failure...a look at any inner-city in America prooves that. Just like it takes effort to make a child a good person (i.e., people are not born good like liberels believe) a child needs to be encouraged to marry and taught that marriage is a benefitial thing. Try not to let the haters get to you, A M.