Using the term “gay marriage” and calling this a civil rights issue is misleading. Homosexuals have the same rights to marry as anyone else. Regardless of your sexual preferences, there are four obvious restrictions on marriage:
1. You can’t marry if the person you want to marry is a minor.
2. You can’t marry if the person you want to marry is already married to someone else.
3. You can’t marry if the person you want to marry is a close relative.
4. You can’t marry if the person you want to marry is the same sex.
Supporters of same-sex marriage want to remove restriction #4 as if it is the only restriction that exists (“consider how you would feel if the government dictated who you could marry”). Opponents of same-sex marriage want to know how you take away #4 without taking away the other three. If it is OK for some judge to decide the rule #4 is no longer valid, then is OK for some other judge to decide that rule #2, or maybe rule #3, or maybe even rule #1 is no longer valid. We know there are people who claim to be “polyamorous”. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to marry all of the people they “love”? If you get to the point where marriage is some random number of individuals of either gender, then the term “marriage” is meaningless.
