Wisconsin still exists? I thought for sure it would have gone into bankrupcy by now.

I am strongly christian and believe gays should have the same rights in the state. But i personally think the government shouldnt call it marriage. Marriage has always been a religious (if you want to argue that then we can also say "personal") agreement between people. The state should only be involved in the economic and law aspects of it. The state does not have the right to call it marriage, whether for gays OR straight people. Then we would put these stupid evangelicals to rest and the homosexual community would have the rights they want. Win-Win

By the way Ron Paul is definitely winning 2012

Ron Paul is definitely losing in 2012. It will be Romney or Pawlenty (or Huntsman after a miracle) with someone like Bachman or another base conservative as VP.

If there is going to be gay marriage in this country, then going through the states is the way to do it. Federalism in action. The last thing this nation needs is another court-imposed divisive issue like abortion.

@Tolstoy - "Keep in mind also that gays, on average, have higher incomes (and therefore are hit with higher income taxes) than breeders."

Really? Breeders? You can't be polite and say gay and straight. You have to be rude and say gay and "breeders". Fuck you, asshole.

Oh, and please provide evidence to back up your claim about this "higher average income".

While I agree with you that "breeder" is a dreadful smear, a higher income for gays makes a lot of sense. Since they can't biologically have children and it's harder or impossible for them to adopt in many places that's a lot more free time to work on a career. A gay burning the midnight oil would be more likely to be promoted than a straight person leaving at five to spend time with their children. Makes perfect sense.

I don't know why Argentina is being bashed. I guess somebody reads the Economist too much.

I'm not so sure on this gay marriage issue. I never thought it to be the right thing to do.

lol, "marriage is a Christian/religious institution" argument

people have been swearing themselves to each other for the rest of their lives since we evolved from Neanderthals, it's always been a personal thing and whoever gets involved can call it whatever the hell they want without someone else falsely claiming that their intolerant-of-gays religion has a legitimate claim to monopoly over the title and use of marriage

also, the real win-win is to get government out of marriage entirely, because no one* outside the two people in question has the right to bitch about the two people in question getting married and removing government from it removes their ability to enforce their bitching :)

*: when I say "no one" here I mean random people who don't know you have no right to bitch about who you marry

@ Furball

I've always found it useful in cases such as this to imagine I live somewhere that has a long tradition of what is being argued for, and then trying to argue in favour of getting rid of it. In terms of gay marriage this is virtually impossible to do with any kind of credibility, which is a pretty clear indicator (to me anyway) that allowing it is the way to go.

The state cannot get out of marriage any more than it can get out of contract law. How do you resolve issues involving divorce, child custody, medical decisions, etc, without government involvement?

Reflexively bashing government makes for silly arguments.

I'd like to thank Draugnar for keeping the conversation civil. Getting offended by "breeder" is like a white person getting indignant over the term "cracker." Or a British person over being called a limey. Non-dominant groups make up terms of differentiation, but in the end, straight white men have a difficult time acting like those terms actually hurt.

And I don't want to speak for Tolstoy, but I'm pretty sure he meant it tongue-in-cheek. My sister went to Smith College and "breeder" is just part of gay culture--it's really not a hateful term.

And here's the evidence you want: http://www.rainbowreferrals.com/sponsors/statistic.asp
It's important to note that it comes from a real estate site because that's one of the places where being gay matters most.
See: http://bigthink.com/ideas/24641
Invictus was good enough to note that many gay couples have no children, which make them excellent trailblazers for up-and-coming neighborhoods. I live in Dorchester, a large, mostly poor borough of Boston that also has lots of beautiful old houses. Gay couples were some of the first to take advantage of low housing prices because they didn't have any children whose safety or education was a concern. When the areas were restored a bit, people like my parents came in and pretty soon the whole area will be returned to its former self.

That is an interesting way of seeing it Octavious. But marrying an opposite gender person isn't tradition, but rather from our own natural wants.
I have a problem with what is natural if gay-marriage is accepted.
Associating natural with tradition is kind of difficult. But I get what President Eden is emphasizing. We should regard individualism a bit more.
Argh, I'm going to have to think more about this.
It would be nice if anyone can suggest more views on this.

I see that there are economic benefits from gay marriage, that is clear.

"The state cannot get out of marriage any more than it can get out of contract law. How do you resolve issues involving divorce, child custody, medical decisions, etc, without government involvement?"

Why do you need a legal contract for marriage to decide this? I didn't say get government out of any of these. I said (and am saying) that you don't need a legal marriage contract to determine the results of these scenarios.

@ Draugnar - Actually Draug, that's one of those basic social scientific facts, gays and lesbians tend to be more highly educated and more affluent than the general average. However the disparity is dropping, though slowly. It is generally thought to be due to the fact that it is easier to come out, and live openly as an LGBT person if you come from a family with well educated, relatively affluent parents. People from working class backgrounds are less likely to come out at all.

@ Invictus - I suspect that you may be correct that going state by state is the best way to avoid making into a divisive issue, or at least a more divisive issue than it already is. However I suspect if/when gay marriage is legal in a given number of states, a critical mass, if you will, the issue will end up being decided at the federal level after all.

@ The Prussian - The argument that marriage has always been a religious or personal thing is a canard marched out by the "tolerant" right in favour of trying to make civil unions the purview of the state and marriages the purview of the church in order to avoid universally allowed gay marraige. That simply isn't the case. Marriages traditionally have a religious trapping because in feudal and monarchic forms of government the church was in many ways an implement of the state. Marriages have always been a social and political and public thing, the involvement of religion probably has a lot more to do with the fact that the church was one of the only bodies capable of keeping records on things like marriages and deaths and births, due in no small part to the fact that clergy were often the most literate segment of the population. But it has always been a matter of the state, though often using the church as a middle man.

"Really? Breeders? You can't be polite and say gay and straight. You have to be rude and say gay and "breeders". Fuck you, asshole."

"While I agree with you that "breeder" is a dreadful smear"

Geez people, get a grip. Breeder is not a 'dreadful smear'. It is a playful/joking term.

No, it's really rude.

No it's not. It is, at worst, somewhat snarky. Way to be a bunch of straight privilege flaunting drama queens everyone.

Marriage simplifies the matter. If you don't have marriage you'd need to replace it with something.

I had a gay boss last summer who used "queen" in a playful way, but if I were to use it (which, naturally, I didn't around him) it would be a really mean thing to say. All you really have to be in life is polite, and calling people breeders, even in a "playful" way, is rude. What if I started calling all gays queens but said I only mean it in a snarky, playful way like my boss did? I bet nobody would go around saying it's just a cute little twist of the gay lion's tail. Let's be polite.

In all honesty, it is counter productive to use words like breeder, and stuff, and so I avoid it. But I get annoyed at straight people who get annoyed when people do use it. Slurs are really only slurs if the group using them has the power to oppress the group at whom their directed, and lets face it. The LGBT community does not have the political clout to oppress the straight majority.

allow it. it's not like there's a law banning gays from f*cking. big whoop.

@ The Prussian: I don't know if there is really a problem calling a gay union a `marriage', the same word `marriage' is already used for very different unions which are subject to different laws and regulations.

A marriage according to Canon Law, in particular that of the Catholic Church, has very different meaning to a marriage according to the state law. So, I don't see a problem that the latter is generally extended to include gay unions, while the individual churches allow or disallow gay marriages.

Here is a good piece about how this change was ushered in: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/nyregion/the-road-to-gay-marriage-in-new-york.html?_r=1&ref=michaelbarbaro

It seems like some benovalent Hedge Fund managers provided the necassary ''critical mass''.

Personally I think the term "marriage" should be reserved for one man and multiple women just like in the bible.

@ President Eden - Humans did not evolve from Neanderthals. The forked off.

In other news, Gays should be allowed to adopt. There are certainly not enough parents to go around.

Marshall, I seem to remember some recent study indicating there was some forking between sapiens and neanderthals as well.

it was a rhetorical device, y'all, relax