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Five years is so short a time in the evolution of a culture. 30 years ago you would have laughed at me the same if I had suggested that same-sex marriage would exist in all the places you just mentioned.

HM Customs & Revenue have extended married dependent status to second and third and fourth wives in the United Kingdom. Similar rules are being drawn up to cover the rest of the EU. HMCR took this move to accommodate those coming into the UK from countries that practiced traditional polygamy. This recognition, in law, points the way to what the future will look like. Enjoy.

When we go from tradition to contract the leap will have been made. No logical argument will stand in the way of any combination of two or more "loving" individuals forming a marriage contract. The debate will be over.

I suggest we consider this. At least make the leap with our eyes wide open.

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The definition of CIVIL marriage in this country is that it's a legal contract between two people, and that's still what it is here in Massachusetts, where we've expanded civil marriage to apply to same sex couples for years now. Can you tell us just how marriage has been "redefined" for straight couples here? None of my straight married friends have mentioned anything about their marriages meaning something different from before. Maybe you can enlighten us as to how their marriages have been so radically altered from what they were six years ago. Obviously, redefining something means that it's now something entirely different.

At any rate, since CIVIL marriage is a CIVIL contract, it IS a civil right, and civil rights aren't just matters of race or color.

Maybe people should learn a bit more about the "democratic process" that our founding fathers envisioned and wrote into the Constitution before making such ignorant statements about the voters having a right to decide a matter that would inhibit the rights of a class of citizens.

1) The founding fathers wrote in our Constitution (Guarantee Clause) of a republican form of democracy, and if you look to the arguments as expounded in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, the idea was that direct democracy (like referenda) would lead to a tyranny of the majority over unpopular minorities. The plain and simple truth was that in our republican democracy, we value all of our citizens, and by letting the majority vote, you get what prsteve11 above calls 'hysteria,' and people vote on emotions and not guarantees of the constitution. The idea of representative democracy is both a more sophisticated form of law making, with committee reports and testimony, and the removal of the elected officials and the constituents allowed for certain policy decisions to be made that would protect politically unpopular groups from suffering at the hands of the majority.

2) The idea of unsophisticated laypeople deciding the fate of someone else's ability to wed is ludicrous. Imagine if the ability to practice Christianity or Judaism or any other religion were put to a vote in a referendum. The idea is inconceivable. People who oppose marriage equality like to frame the debate as a moral one, and not a civil rights issue, but the clear fact of the matter is that an entire group's right to enter into contractual formalized relation is being denied. That is, civil marriage is being denied. Plain and simple, this equates to a question of civil rights.

3) The founders also wrote into the Constitution a separation of Church and State. In my opinion, government never had the right to marry anyone, since marriage is a sacrament, and the government by definition does not have the ability to sanctify (make holy). But, the government had every right to protect the contractual relationship now called (civil) marriage by regulating it and issuing licenses. But it would be impossible to re-write history and undue the tradition of civil marriage in this country, and it is manifestly unjust to deny access to this franchise to an entire class of citizens based on the idea that it is not religiously acceptable, because religion is personal and should have no bearing on whether the (secular) State acknowledges the institution between same-sex partners or not.

Also, the idea that same-sex marriage would alter the "sanctity" of marriage fails for two major reasons. First, Churches/Synagogues/Temples/Mosques etc would be able to continue to decide for themselves whether or not to sanctify same-sex unions. The government is constrained by the first amendment and cannot impose its will on any state in this matter. Second, there are greater damages to the "sanctity" of marriage than same-sex unions, namely divorce. Have a referendum on that.

(As an aside, religious arguments that focus on "traditional definitions of marriage" are ignorant of many aspects of traditional marriage. Up until the past century, women were property in marriage, marriage contracts were between the families of the couples and not the couple themselves, African-Americans were denied the ability to marry Caucasians until the late 1940s, and even in the Bible there are major characters who had numerous wives, a wife and numerous concubines, or numerous wives and numerous concubines. Also, if anyone frames the debate in terms of Leviticus, you are just a hypocrite. If you eat shellfish, trim your bear, sit in the chair a women who menstruated sat in, lied with a woman within a week of her period, and many more, you are just as much an abomination as a man who lies with a man.)

Basically, the question is one of civil rights, but at a more fundamental level, it's about basic human dignity. There is a class of citizens in this country that pays the same taxes, obeys the same laws, but if my partner were hospitalized, I'd have to worry about whether the doctor would let me in to see him. People like to claim that homosexuals are seeking "special" rights, but all we ask for is to be treated with the same dignity as everyone else, and offered the same right to enter into the legal and contractual (civil) relationship the government recognizes as marriage. It's time for conservatives to stop hiding behind their bigotry and advocating for blatant discrimination in the name of religion.