Marriage is not a religious instituion. How many couples get married at city hall or by a justice of the peace (with a state issued licence) and their marriage is recognized by the state? In many European countries the only marriage ceremony that is recognized is the civil one. You can be married in a church if you want but it has no legal status.

It is also not just to have children. If that were the case then straight couples who can’t have children or decide not have children would have to have their marriages annulled.

Marriage is a way for a couple to publicly pronounce their love for and committment to each other.

Here is how your country appears to an outsider on this matter. You proudly proclaim that there is separation of church and state. I find the only difference between you and extremist Muslim countries is that they admit that religion is used in determining their laws.

One of your most “sacred” documents states that all men are created equal and you espouse your democracy as the greatest in the world. Yet for people who are not white males to get equal treatment and rights it has taken protests, legislation and court challenges to get these rights. Remember when women were not considered to be “persons” and therefore were not permitted to vote.

Yes, it took a long time to get gay marriage in Canada. The government finally recognized that this type of discrimination was wrong according to our “Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. And guess what, there were American religious groups who were sending money to Canadian groups to fight this battle towards equality. I can imagine the outrage that would occur if a foreign country were to send funds to yours to fight an issue. (Just because you are a world power does not make you boss of the world.) Charlton Heston even had the nerve to come up here and try and get us to change OUR constitution to include the right to bear arms.

But I digress.

To me the bottom line is this. Either you Americans believe in your constitution or you don’t. (Remember, separation of church and state?) If you do not want to grant the same rights to every citizen then they should receive a discount on their income taxes because they are considered second class citizens.

Race/Education and Religion will always circle us back to this point. Pleae spare us all the outrage for the Black community of CA. The fact that “racial minorities, who have every opportunity to know better given the history of oppression they’ve exprienced, can be so bigoted my be very dihearting…if you have no concept of human emotion, nature and history but those of us that do, understand that the oppressed opress the oppressed. Of course no gays, sexual minorities, who have every opportunity to know better given the history of oppression they’ve experienced has any bigoted acts of oppression.

But again, no solutions but plenty more blame and ignorance.