Butter,

It's been a total of 13 hours since I posted in a thread. I went home, went to sleep, got up and went to work, had an appearance at a local elementary school and have now returned to work for a few minutes before taping a television show.

I open phone lines for three hours every morning and defend my opinions five days a week. I don't slink away from any argument. After nine pages of asking the same questions over and over again, however, I'm not sure what more needs to be said, but I'll look back in the thread and answer whatever it is that's been said since I last checked in.

Sleep, shmeep, I want answers!

Maple Leafs, your example actually doesn't really bother me... who cares if they get married if they aren't having any children(whole genetic issue)? It doesn't affect me either way. So why should I care what they do?

OK. That's a valid answer. Some people would agree, some won't.

It's a more consistent position, though, than being in favor of gay marriage but deadset against further expanding the definition.

What's to stop a state from simply declaring gay marriage illegal? Potentially the state constitution. Under the american system of jurisprudence, if a legislature passes a law that violates the constitution, that law is void and unenforecable. For example, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution provides that a search warrant may not be issued except upon a showing of probable cause made under oath or affirmation. If the legislature passes a law that says a warrant may be issued without any showing of probable cause whatsoever, that law will be stricken down as unconstitutional (even if that law is supported by 100% of the people and the law passes unanimously). This is what's called "judicial review," a concept established in a famous case in 1803 that has been the foundation of american jurisprudence ever since. It basically means that the courts as one of the three branches of government have the power to determine if a legislative or executive act violates the constitution and, if so, to strike down that law as unconstitutional.

So, there's really nothing to stop a state from declaring gay marriage illegal. In doing so, however, the state is, among other things, making a classification and giving certain rights and privileges to one group (heterosexuals) while denying those same rights and privileges to another group (homosexuals). Consequently, someone can go to court and argue that the classification violates the equal protection clause of the constitution and the court should use its power of judicial review and strike down the law as unconstitutional. Then we get into the equal protection analysis. Assume we are using "rational basis" scrutiny. The state must then submit admissible evidence that the law is rationally related to a legitimate governmental purpose. If the state can't satisfy that burden, the law will be declared unconstitutional as violative of the equal protection clause. You can read the Massachusetts decision and see the three three legislative rationals (i.e., legitimate governmnetal purposes) offered by the state in that case, and the court, for good reason IMO, rejected all three.

Thus, the issue isn't that "you have to recognize gay marriage because it's not illegal"; the issue is you have to give different groups equal protection (rights and privileges) under the law because there are no legitimate governmental purposes for not doing so. Because of the establishment clause, saying that Moses said homosexuality was an abomination and Paul said homosexuals won't get into the kingdom of heaven are not legitimate governmental purposes.

Incest and polygamy are separate issues. You don't say, well, we let gays marry so we have to let every other group marry too. That's not a valid legal argument. Rather, you have to ask what is the legitimate governmental purpose for not allowing them to marry and is the specific law reasonably related to achieving that purpose. For the people making the "slippery slope" argument, taking the position that the incest and polygamy laws are unconstitional is a necessary part of their argument, because otherwise there must be a legitimate governmental purpose for those laws and, likewise, a legitimate governmental purpose for denying incestuous couples and polygamists the right to marry. In other words, if there is a legitimate governmental purpose for prohibiting incest and polygamy, then there is also a legitimate governmental purpose for prhobiting them from marrying.