I personally am with the crowd who believes this has to happen:

The term 'marriage' in a legislative sense and all of the benefits it contains should be changed to 'civil union'. This way, there are no worries about how we're redefining marriage that has been used since it was defined by religions, etc. This way civil unions of any two eligible people, regardless of gender, can get the benefits they want/deserve/whatever. Whether or not the feds withdraw benefits or not it doesn't matter, because it's no longer a religious issue.

And I agree 100% that anyone has the right to *marry* somebody of the opposite gender, but the majority (insert democratic sentiments here) feel that traditional *marriage* shouldn't be the criterion for receiving benefits that SHOULD be going to civil unions. Simply, times have changed and the government needs to amend a little bit, same thing with the certain plant argument.

To continue, "marriage" in the eyes of the now majority of people should be about love, security, etc., and with *anyone* regardless of gender.

(but that has so many parallels to the interracial argument it's annoying. And yes, I know you'll backlash me for that one, because its not a choice, yada yada but we don't know that being gay is a choice. Oh, and for the choice acting that way argument, they may be of a different race without choice but they have the choice of acting stereotypically asian or latino or black, etc., but they aren't limited on who to marry by how they act. If you're going to rant about how false this argument is, it isnt necessary to my argument and we can ignore this section, but I feel it's still legitimate.)

All of the examples you pulled in your last paragraph rant are public health/safety issues, gay civil union is not.

Capitalism dictates the businesses do what they will, government shouldn't regulate that. However, minimum wage laws save Joe and Jim's asses every day, which is nice. Just ask a thai kid making your apple products.

The government does indeed recognize men and women differently, which has been changing step by step as we continue. Right to vote, right to be in combat roles, etc., we are moving towards gender equality.

All of our arguments. Every argument being proposed in this forum is a DIRECT result of the ambiguation of the term "marriage". Without a set definition or redefinition, we aren't going to be able to say which side is 'equal'.

For side reference, every time somebody says people are 'equal' because they can marry anyone of the opposite gender I hate the world a bit more and feel a desire to physically damage things. That's not how i define equality and *internally* and *reflexively* see that as ignorant, bigoted thinking. I'm going to try to keep that out of my debate and arguments and try to explain why it seems that way to me, and I know that the reason we see equality as so different is because of the vagueness of the term marriage.

Without redefinition this argument (as we have seen on this thread) inevitably ends up in a hatefest, which is why i suggest the new universe of civil union as our grounds for equality, rather than the religious issue of marriage.

Does that make sense? If it does, we could move into the realm of arguing whether or not gay civil unions are moral/correct/wanted or not. That topic is free of religion and much happier for me. (probably because the side against me has no leg to stand on when in this redefinition, but hey it works).