Quote:But if we determine rights based on one person's religion, who's to say we won't start determining rights based on someone else's religion?  


Just look the middle east, and see how they're doing in regards to having religious-based rights.  I don't think you'd want that here any more than I do.  But to decide someone doesn't deserve certain rights because of religion opens that door.  


Marriage is an institute that has evolved over time.  Some for the better, and some for the worse.  At one time it was commonly acceptable to marry a baby.  Each person's marriage is their own, and can only be defined by their own actions.  Otherwise Kim Kardashian ruined the sanctity of everyone's marriage (along with the vegas drunk weddings) not to mention all the people who used marriage as a business merger.

 

Your comments are the reason I specify marriage as we've defined it in our culture, that of enlightenment age Western Civ, and your first statement is exactly what's been done. Judges decided that the way we've defined marriage (and it's legal rights) for centuries is no longer law and redefined it into something else (with as of yet undefined and potentially limitless legal rights) without the consent or input of the legislative branch. I'm not even saying that, short of my own preference of zero government interference, the legislatures shouldn't pass something to allow gay marriage; I'm simply saying that the way this happened leads to black robed Oligarchy where a judge made law from the bench. As I said before, marriage (in our culture) went from one man and one woman to one person and one person. Why shouldn't it go to three or more persons? If a judge can rule from a bench that marriage isn't one man and one woman anymore is there anything anywhere that they can't change (for good or ill)? Redefining the one of the pillars of society by fiat should give us all pause, that's a lot of power for a small group of mostly unelected people.

---