First you allow gay marriage and then the slope slips to allow siblings or animals or children or whatever.

The Equal Right Amendment didn't pass because of all those slippery slope arguments. One of them, of course, was "Your daughter will be in combat." and another extemely common was "You'll have unisex bathrooms." Hmmm. (Theoretically, women still can't serve in combat roles. That affects their chances for promotion, yet bullets and roadside bombs seem to be completely unaware of their non-combat status.) We've frequently ended up at the bottom of the slippery slope without the republic falling, but also without any legal gains.

My true feeling on marriage is that it is a spiritual contract and as such the state should not be involved at all.

My belief is that marriage is a civil contract that offers specific legal rights and privileges, such as survivor benefits, pensions and inheritance. Churches should be free to offer any type of "spiritual union" they want, even between a man and his beloved box turtle, but that should have no legal standing.

Every time I logically argue these issues in my head I end up in the same place Laga is, but there needs to be a state-sanctioned way of saying "This person who wasn't part of my family before IS, now." for all sorts of legal reasons, and I can't see calling that anything but marriage.

Of course, under that idea of marriage there's no reason to allow siblings to marry, really, unless it's just to say "This sister is more important than the other ones if it comes to a fight."

Maybe the solution is a giant database where every person in the world ranks the closeness and importance of every other person in the world (with born family defaulting to some highish number and most others defaulting to zero). Visitation rights are granted to anybody with an importance level over some cutoff. So to marry somebody, you just raise their number to higher than all (or most) others.

To my I-like-preferential-voting head, that sounds kind of... awesome. And it would totally bring new meaning to the phrase "You just gained some points with me!"

It's bullshit that they can somehow say it's okay for *some* gay people to be married, but then no more.

Exactly! I can only imagine how frustrating this is for all the couples whether they managed to get married during the brief window of opportunity or not. What is the next step?

Well, Bobby has plain old strep throat and nothing more dire. The doc also looked at his leg which is about 1/3 covered with scab from a bike mishap. He declared that to look appropriately gross for road burn. Back to school Thursday or Friday. DH gets strep if anyone near gets it while I have never had it. I'm trying to get him to gargle a few times a day to keep it at bay. I think I will keep with my strep free streak.

While I can understand marriage as a state in life to be recognized by state to get certain things from, I can't understand weddings.

From one day to the next, the only thing that's changed is the amount of alcohol that entered your body and the money that left your wallet. While that can be a serious test for relationships (not to mention bride and groomzilas)... Why? If relationship only should involve 2, let it be those two, and c'est tout.

So disgusted and disappointed and angry and sad right now.

Weddings at their best are celebrations, a fantastic excuse to get all of your family and friends together for one ginormous, happy party in your honor. They can suck, obviously, but the overwhelming number of them, I think, are wonderful occasions.

Which is all the more reason there should be more opportunities to have as many of them as possible. Support gay marriage!

I think the point of a wedding is to formally cement the union with the witness of your friends and family. Plus, I kinda love a good wedding.

You know, one of the arguments they've pulled out against gay marriage is that it would be a burden on small businesses, with having to provide spousal benefits to the married gay people; one line was somthing about suddenly someone who didn't have a spouse does.

So how would that be different from the old-fashioned kind of marriage?

My 24 year-old self loved the idea/execution of a formal wedding. After all, to this day I still love any excuse to dress up.

However, my 41 year-old self would just as soon run off to some deserted beach with just the beloved. Have a party afterwards for friends that's relaxed and fun.

Lessons learned over time.

suddenly someone who didn't have a spouse does.

And yet companies all over the country are extending benefits to domestic partners.

If marriage didn't exist legally couples could do what polyamorous families have done for years in order to secure the same rights as married folk: form a corporation.