I believe that a fundamental unanswered question about same-sex marriage is its relevant spin-off. That is to say, if that arrangement is made legal, should not polygamy, human-animal sexual relations, etc.? Why should gay people be granted legal gratification of their sexual urges while other sexually aberant practices remain a criminal act?

I realize marriage is a legal and secular institution, but to many of us it is first and foremost a religious institution.  As such it is a holy sacrament between a man and a woman for life.  It’s not some generic term that can be farmed out to anyone who wants to use it with their own definition.

I think the courts are a good place to start. The courts are there to provide legal rights and protections. Ideally they are not to be bias. If left to the wishes of the people, African Americans would not be able to vote, women would not be able to vote, interracial marriages would still be illegal, and segregation would still be legal. Education is the best way for society to understand each other. Science is constantly discovering that many do not have a choice in deciding their sexual orientation. As soon as heterosexuals can tell us the day they decided to be heterosexual, I will tell you the day I decided to be a lesbian. Regardless of our rights, we will still have loving and committed relationships. We as a people are intelligent and if we do not gain the right to marry, we will find other ways to have our relationships recognized and we will gain/have legal rights and protections. It would just be less expensive and easier to call it marriage.

I feel it is the fundamental right of two people in a loving and committed relationship to have that relationship honored and legally recognized as such.  Whether it is called marriage (preferrably) or something else, if it takes a court decision to bring about recognition, so be it.  As mentioned above, this certainly would not be the first time it took the courts to recognize the rights of a particular group.

I’m really glad to see that no one is taking a wrong versus right approach to this, because let’s face it ... we are all broken vessels in some way, and therefore, so will be our decisions.

Personally, I believe the decision has already been made by God, who has reserved Marriage as a convenant between a single man and a single woman.

I also believe that it was decided by the people of San Diego in 2000.

Some have suggested that it should be a decision for the courts. However, it needs to be understood that for more than a decade, those supporting liberal adgendas have ensured that liberal judges will be in a position to make the ruling ... so the impartiality factor may be called into question.

Whichever way any further decisions comes out, I think there will be a lot of unhappiness. My main prayer is that children should not be sucked into the procedings and used as pawns by either side.

A more general formulation of the question posed is, “Who should have the power to redefine words that have long been consistently used with particular clear meanings?”

From the legal point of view, this is critically important. Existing laws and policies will have completely new meanings and implications if key terms in them are redefined AFTER they have been passed.

So neither the courts nor the voters should have standing to attempt to redefine “marriage” any more than they should have standing to attempt to redefine “sunrise.”

Marriage is an economic and social institution that evolved for the production, protection and raising of children. Sex and love are not its essence; they seem to be nature’s tricks for getting us in this “family way”!  This, at least, seems to be the essence of marriage as it has evolved in most cultures (and did so long before Christianity, for the religionists and theocrats in this discussion!). That remains its primary institutional nature, even if some couples do not or cannot have children. That institutional nature differs fundamentally from all other types of unions.

It seems to me the only matters the legislatures and courts should be sticking their noses into are NOT whether marriage should be redefined but only what additional types of contract-based civil unions the state wishes to allow and what rights and responsibilities will go with each.

Anyone who’s ever been married knows that sex is a small part of the partnership. Getting married to legitimize sex, as noted by Patrick Groff (above) is ridiculous.

It should not be left up to the electorate to decide civil rights issues. If it were up to the people, no progress would have ever been made with respect voting rights for blacks and women. We would probably still have segregation.

It takes an unbiased group of people, in this case state Supreme Court justices. Let’s hope they make the right one and they don’t let their religious views taint the decision making process.

It really makes me sad what a lot of you are saying. I see a lot of comments about religion. Your religion is YOUR RELIGION. Everyone doesn’t believe the bible. I really don’t like that it’s ok for people to say “god bless you” to people of different or no faiths, but if they turn around and say “I don’t believe in god/or your god”, it’s thought of as a persoanl attack.There is no fact in religion it’s all based on faith, what you THINK might be the truth. So don’t push it on other people. I know that the majority of people commenting here are probably older, well the times they are changing, and they always will be changing. Gay marriage will become legal, and forty years from now a gay couple walking down the street will be just as exceptable as a interacial couple. You might still be lost in your ignorance. Get with the times and realize that love always wins, not the hate that stems from a book written by MAN to control all the gullable MEN out there. Have fun in your comfortable lies while the rest of us fight for what’s right.

I’m a stay-at-home mother in a heterosexual marriage. The only way for civil rights to begin to be properly addressed is by the court system. I will previous poster here and say if not for our court system deciding civil rights there would still be segregation and blacks and women would not be voting.

If you believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and is solely a religious institution, then you should believe that there should be no tax breaks for married couples, no special rights in regards to medical care decisions, no specified inheritance rights for spouses.

In this country marriage is a secular union and with some it is also a religious union. I believe the best way to handle the situation is to require that all couples have a secular marriage performed with the Justice of the Peace, and then if they so desire they can have their marriage performed in their church as well. A church wedding should cease to qualify as a secular wedding contract. That way all couples can have their secular marriage and spouse rights, and those who wish to can celebrate and honor their union within the faith of their own choosing.

This is how it is successfully handled in many European countries. Marriage within your church or faith can be whatever your faith decides, but the civil union and rights must be there for all couples.

Please let’s not let this degrade into a “them versus us” hate session. Everyone here has simply stated what they believe and why. It’s all part of why they are taking a given stance on the “Who should decide” question. No one is pushing anything on anyone. It’s an open forum for comment, that’s all.

Well...we’re off and running aren’t we?  All the lunatics who mention gay marriage and equate it with polygamy, bestiality and child marriage are all out in force.  Yup, just as I suspected.  And of course they all mention sacredness and holiness and sanctity in the same breath implicating that there is some magic bibidy bobiddy boo hocus pocus which make is “so”.  Well, folks, have it because so far, all you self-righteous religious folk have really done a great job of preserving that sanctity.  Hmmmmm...shall we mention Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggart and the like or shall we dust them neatly under the carpet?  Shall we plan the Idaho Senator card or the Governor of New Jersey card?  How about that Mayor of SF and his little indiscretions?  Or Bill and Monica?  Sanctity indeed.

“I realize marriage is a legal and secular institution, but to many of us it is first and foremost a religious institution.  As such it is a holy sacrament between a man and a woman for life.  It’s not some generic term that can be farmed out to anyone who wants to use it with their own definition”

The fact that marriage to many is a religious institution DOES NOT give reason to deny marriage to gay and lesbian couples.  In fact our constitution is supposed to protect the citizens from being forced to adhere to a particular religion or belief.  I understand that to many marriage is a religious institution which is why YOU have the choice to choose the religious setting in which you exchange your vows. However just because you choose that religion it does not give the state the right to validate marriage on those terms. A marriage certificate granted by the state is first and foremost a civic contract, denying marriage to gay gouple denies them their rights to engage in that contract. That is discrimination.
When people try to start defending “traditional marriage” with religion it is allowing church and state to mix, and last time I checked as citizens we are protected from that. I am a citizen, I pay taxes, I must abide by laws, I should be given the same rights to enter into civil contracts as I see fit.

“When people try to start defending “traditional marriageâ€? with religion it is allowing church and state to mix, and last time I checked as citizens we are protected from that.”

Here here!

Church + State = things like burning people at the stake!

The “tradition” argument does not ultimately hold up in the case of marriage.  The institution has changed over the millennia and I’m sure there were ‘traditionalists’ decrying their inability to have concubines when the man/woman marriage was instituted.  Marriage will continue to evolve as human cultures evolve.  The step being considered here is whether all people, of all orientations, will be treated equally by their society.  Some societies have decided YES, ours is faltering at committing to equal treatment for all its citizens.  The fear mongering that equates same-sex marriage with bestiality and child marriage is irrational and should stop.

As a Catholic, I believe that churches should be able to individually define marriage as they see fit and that the government has no right to deny one group or another the right to be “married”. I believe the government should have a seperate term entirely of how it classifies legally committed couples and the term marriage should only be a religious classification as opposed to a legal one.  I do not believe the government should be able to dictate to anyone what their love and devotion to one another can be called. Remember that the designers of our constitution instituted the seperation of church and state for a reason so that the government could not decide for the masses what religious views they should have to follow.

We need to separate the issues here.

At least over recent history “traditional marriage” is defined pretty much the same way across all major cultures and religions, including atheism, agnosticism, humanism, etc. It is between a man and a woman.

But we must respect the separation of church and state. People should not expect the state to define civic marriage - and its rights and responsibilites - in terms of their own particular religion, political ideology or philosophy.

Any religious or other group can, on their own, define marriage any way they want. But that imposes no obligation on the state to recognize unions that do not concord with the traditional civil definition of marriage common to almost all cultures.

Certainly there many cultures who have sanctioned polygamy, especially polygyny, as a reasonable way to produce and raise children. If same-sex marriages are legitimized by the state, it will be very hard to argue against polygyny.

Oh, to be 40 years younger!

I suppose I see marriage primarily as a religious institution and as a legal/secular institution only as a distant second.  In light of that it’s not surprising that my views would differ greatly from those who see it primarily as a legal/secular institution, but some of the comments here have caused me to see from that side as well. 

In the end, I find that I object only to the use of the word “marriage” but not to the rights and privileges being sought by advocates of same-sex “marriage”.  In my mind, marriage can only mean one thing, and yeah, I’m probably too old to change.

And this isn’t politics or hate mongering, it’s just my opinion.  And I’m not even a judge so relax.

Mr. Belshaw states, “Some have suggested that it should be a decision for the courts. However, it needs to be understood that for more than a decade, those supporting liberal adgendas have ensured that liberal judges will be in a position to make the ruling ... so the impartiality factor may be called into question.”

From the Los Angeles Times on-line, “[T]he seven-member court has six Republicans and one Democrat. It is considered cautious and moderately conservative.”

Perhaps we should gather our facts before proclaiming the bias of the court.  Or is just your bias that is showing through?

It seems to me that we cannot let religion or popular vote determine peoples rights; that has given us slavery, prevented women from voting (and denied other rights), and prolonged racial segragation and intolerance for most of our history.  Marriage equality is probably the next major step towards all people being equal under the law.  Your own religion can still be as restrictive as you want, but our legal system/government needs be inclusive and treat each person equally.
If your religion doesn’t allow marriage between same sex couples, interracial couples, or couples that don’t produce offspring I would suggest that you are free not to acknowledge the marriage.  But if 2 people want to join in that union they should be allowed to, and should recieve the same legal and financial benefits that all married people receive...and those are significant.  If you haven’t thought about the tax and survivorship benefits of marriage I suspect that you are able to marry your loved one.) Our government should treat all citizens equally, and not allowing any two people who want to marry to do so is not equality. (note that we need not include animals, since they have never had human rights).
I can never understand why people use their religion to restrict how other people behave; religion should be private or practiced with your co-believers and not be imposed upon others.  Notice that all the objections to marriage equality have been based on religion and tradition.

Jeff, of course my bias is showing, it comes with stating an opinion or belief (which is after all the point of this forum). I know liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, so I’m not sure how the labeling helps. I just feel that no matter how impartial we hope our judiciary will be; we should be aware that California has become more liberal over the last decade, that there are powerful political forces at play, and that the judges are only human. I hope, as perhaps you do, that impartiality will prevail, and that all voices will listened to with equal contemplation. However, I reserve my right to remain concerned and cautious when such weighty matters are left in the hands of a select few.

Michael, you seem to equate “religion” and “tradition” and they are and should be quite separable.

The definitions in a dictionary have nothing going for them other than “tradition.” But that is a tremendous amount.

Without such traditions, without consensus on definitions, and on many other things, communication and society fall apart. 

People should be equal before the law, but that does not mean the law does or ever has treated them as IDENTICAL before the law. Thus we distinguish males and females, minors and adults, citizens and non-citizens, etc., etc.

For those who want to redefine marriage in opposition to the common understanding of most societies, the strategy of trying to paint this as merely an issue of discrimination obviously is apparently thought to be a useful one. But I suspect most people regard it as a disingenuous or dishonest one - and so the “redefine marriage” camp ends up looking like a bunch of Washington politicians.

This isn’t about polygamy, other forms of animal marriage, or any form of animal sex to include the human animal. The issue is about two CONSENTING adults who have found a loving happy home that gets torn apart as a result of bigotry and hate.  If it was about sex in bed, Gay people wouldn’t need such a useless document, it’s about much more than that.

Some say the courts should follow the law that legislators and voters created.  Yes that is true, however when a law is created to oppress another Group of Californian’s and treat them less than equal it is a violation of the constitution.  The courts and legislature are supposed to fix this problem.  Legislature tried to fix this problem and the Gov vetoed it.  It’s now up to the courts to fix the discrimination problem and make a ruling on it.  Prop 22 isn’t about Californian’s it’s about out of state American’s.  It won because of lies and help from religious institutions like the Mormons and Catholic supporters, another violation of the laws of the land.  Religious laws should remain with their institutions and not interfere with civil laws; we pay taxes they don’t!  It’s pure Malleus Maleficarum, and it’s time we put an end to this kind of hate from those people and their supporters! Let’s honor our brothers and sisters who perished by people like those haters and killers. 

The church never sanctioned marriage until around the 8th century, and prior to that it was and still is a civil practice started by the Pagan people.  Its purpose is for validating, under civil law, legal rights for property and heirs. Same-sex couples had opportunities to marry in classical history, and that was taken away. Marriage had nothing to do with making baby’s because Pagans already know how to do that, and they never needed any law to make it so.

Marriage should have never of been redefined by the church, they took it away just like they took every other practice [celebrations] away from other cultures and peoples, and it’s time civil society took it back, and returned the practice to ALL of it’s citizens under civil law.

“I can never understand why people use their religion to restrict how other people behave; religion should be private or practiced with your co-believers and not be imposed upon others.”

I think this gets right to the heart of it for me.  Marriage is a holy sacrament in my view.  And I do believe it was a church institution in this country before it became a secular institution, but I’m speculating there.  Now it’s being “imposed” on us in a form that I don’t agree with.  Why is the term “marriage” so important to the same-sex advocates?  Why not come up with a new term, even if the benefits are the same or similar?  Why insist on “marriage”.  I understand it’s easier to use an existing institution but surely there are other names you could use that may take longer but achieve the same result, plus have the distinction of a same-sex union rather than a heterosexual union.....unless, of course, your main goal is to shove it down the throats of people like me.  If that’s the case, it would better serve your own cause to keep your belief system “private or practiced with your co-believers and not imposed upon others.”

The only motive that Gay rights advocates have is to be treated with respect, currently marriage provides protections to the people that are married, and the religious institutions that claim to be the inventors of marriage don’t want gay family’s to have those rights. Marriage is a civil right regardless of how each different faith may practice it. “Unions” to me are the same as marriages [same meaning] however, unions don’t provide the same legal protections and even though they can have a union in other states they are still denied important family rights legal rights under the marriage laws. 

Marriage is the only one that will provide those all legal rights.  It’s not about shoving it down anyones throats, except for religion wanting to deny those rights.  It’s not about sex because sex can be done with out marriage.  We all know we can have sex without marriage, it’s a bigger picture and has nothing to do with that.  Religion as usual has been the basic oppressor in ALL society’s, even advocating murder for our citizens. 

It’s not about others or their religion, it’s about the couples who wish to marry, and they should have that right.  Why would some one elses marriage bother some one else?  It’s just plane old fashioned traditional hate.  Marriage was not the invention of the church, the church stole that practice from other’s just like they stole other practices, it does not belong to them.  People think we have holiday’s because of the church, not so, we have holiday’s because of the Pagan people, and the church stole those practices and covered up the ancient way’s through lies.

Hear! Hear! to Ms. C. Rogers.  I believe she has it correct.  To my mind, she makes the most tangible and practical arguments for why marriage is a “duality,” a religious/secular institution that is—permit me— married to a civil institution.

And therein lies my second point:  There *is* a semantic issue at stake here.  Simply put, there is much argument over the term “marriage” vice an alternative that is indeed equal yet, well, different.

To call the union between two people of the same sex anything other than “marriage” just isn’t satisfactory.  Why?  If the term ‘marriage’ -in whatever language - is the accepted, de facto benchmark noun for that relationship upon which is conferred whatever combination of religious and civil rights/responsibilities deemed de rigeur by prevailing faiths and governments, then acknowledging those same rights/responsibilities for same-sex couples deserves to be called nothing less, i.e., nothing different.

Were that not true, then we have what I see as an ironic outcome of those defending the word’s traditional definition: It loses some of its true essence for those defending an “historic precedent.” It suggests that same-sex couples are somehow not as worthy of the contract(s) defined by “marriage,” and that some other term, hawked as “different but equal,” will suffice.  The real rub here, I think, for same-sex couples is that using something other than “marriage’ is akin to offering up only the very last seat on the bus to Rosa Park.  And we know how that went down.

I’m not posting here to incite a flame war around semantics; indeed, my primary note was to agree with Ms. Rogers, for I think she gets it.  But it is relevant, I think, to consider that society has, for about a decade, been arguing the semantics of “marriage” vs. “civil contract” and probably a few other possible alternatives.  Yet languages evolve and morph to reflect a generation’s prevailing economics, climate, confidence, strife, war, peace, etc.  In short, they change; they’re fluid.

Perhaps this might make for a decent comparison: Calling “marriage” a “civil union” is akin to forcing heterosexual couples who practice sex prior to the wedding (which, of course, never happens today) to accept a bonafide “Hitching License” instead of a “Marriage License”—for “marriage” connotes compliance with centuries of laws and scripture around which its value is defined, and lack of strict compliance disqualifies its use.  And the sole deciding factor?  The couple was found to have had premarital sex.  How many such heterosexual couples would be OK with producing a “Hitching License” if asked to prove their relationship?  It’s no different for same-sex couples: To produce a “Civil Union” document is akin to demonstrating that they weren’t worthy of a “real marriage” certificate.

As humans evolve to understand that we’re much more alike than we are dissimilar, I’m sure that “marriage” won’t be the only word facing a future jury of its peers.  And to be sure, were the concepts of “civil matrimony” and “religious matrimony” less blurred - as I think they should be - the entire argument would be thrown out anyway.

Finally, is all this really *that* big a deal? Twenty years on, are people really going to care?  And though I’m not a pious guy, if God exists, and he loves all his children equally, do you think he really cares what we call the word that defines the construct around which his subjects love each other?  For crying out loud, don’t you think He just wants to get the job done?