What's really unbelievable is that we're even having a national "debate" over marriage equality!

1) Some religious denominations oppose same-sex marriage.

2) Some religious denominations clearly do not oppose same-sex marriage.

3) Some religious denominations insist on marriage equality. The one I belong to decided there was nothing stopping them from holding and celebrating same-sex marriage within our congregation ten years before our state made it legal, and they did it from a religious position, a belief in that of God in every person, the sanctity of love in our lives, and an insistence on treating all people equally. That the state refused to legally recognize marriages that our congregation recognized and celebrated, was insulting, but no barrier to expressing our beliefs and recognizing the love and commitment within our congregation.

4) Lawmakers and the Press have been overly influenced by (1), and have seemingly forgotten our First Amendment and the separation of Church and State.

5) If churches do not agree on the subject (see above, 1, 2, 3), and they clearly don't, then there is no unified religious stance on marriage equality. There being no unified religious position, then the First Amendment should become even easier to respect, since imposing one church's view on other churches is unforgivable. (Never mind that it's already unforgivable to impose any church's view on the secular population!)

6) One couple's marriage has no effect on the value or stability of any other couple's marriage. This has always been true. Marriages survive or fail on the strength of commitment, love, and understanding of each partner, nothing else. The canard that same-sex marriage would damage hetero marriage is not only bizarre, I can't imagine how anyone with more than four functioning neurons in their head, who wasn't a suffering closet-case trying to resist "temptation" themselves, could believe it.

7) The other canard, that marriage is irretrievably linked to child-bearing and therefore must not be made available to same-sex couples, is gibberish posing as rationalization. Post-menopausal and sterile people are allowed to marry. People who can bear children but don't want any, are allowed to marry. (No marriages are ever unilaterally dissolved by a U.S. state for failing to bear children. Can you just picture the firestorm if any state ever even thought about this?) Couples who don't even want sex are allowed to marry for the comradeship, mutual support, and financial benefits. Not only that, but babies have no respect for marriage. They get born whether their parents are married to each other or not! Quite a few, all the time, and this has been going on for... well, forever!

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My goodness, the things some people believe!