While I respect your "higher semantics" about what the word "marry" does and does not mean to you personally, the cold truth is that without that piece of paper (or some legal equivalent), your subjective opinion that you are "married" doesn't add up to a hill of beans in, e.g., an ICU, a probate court, an immigration office or any other context where legal status matters.

Cheers…

I like to point it that what is on the table for Californians in November is not whether gay marriage should exist, or whether the citizens morally approve of it, but only whether the state should recognize gay marriages equally to straight ones. The citizens are not being asked (and do not get to say) whether gay people can marry. We can marry, and we have been marrying. I, for instance, married my husband seven years ago. We just don't have a license granting state recognition of our marriage. But our friends, family, neighbors, and church family witnessed our vows, and they along with most of our society understand us as a married couple.

Gallagher's biggest non-sequitur, I think, is that she asserts that marriage exists prior to the state's regulation of it, but then she talks as if the state is *creating* gay marriage. That's nonsense. Just as it did with straight marriage, the state recognition of gay marriage is merely catching up to an already-existing social practice.

Interesting thesis. Care to defend it? What specifically in this post indicates a hatred for Christians or "everyone who doesn’t act or think exactly like him."

Makes me glad that I’m no longer a libertarian.

So you determine your political ideologies based on your agreement or disagreement with individuals who share the label versus actual policy positions? How quaint.

But she also says the US government ought to allow *churches* to decide who can and cannot marry, then grant legal status to anyone the church decides to call "married".

So basically, she thinks the state should recognize any partnership a church accepts, but that it's wrong for the state to make up its own mind what partnerships it will legally recognize.

1) Wonder what she plans to do about all those FLDS "spiritual marriages"?

2) Does she really think it's okay that my ability to marry will depend on whether I live near (or can travel to) an accepting church? Whether I'm willing to set foot *in* that church? (Tough luck if you're an atheist that wants to marry. . . )

3) Has she heard the phrase "separation of church and state"?

4) Does she plan to put a limit on what's really a "church"? Or can I form my own branch of the Church of Monday Night Football and start marrying off any group of 2 or more who beat the point spread on an upcoming game?

5) Will her next suggestion be that courts should only recognize a divorce authorized by a local church?