edit: added legal before potential

That's the real question here. This issue isn't about hate and dehumanization -- I mean, there's way too much hate and dehumanization, certainly, but not enough to drive electoral victories we've seen. The question is just an extension of the social upheaval of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The real remarkable thing is that it's been simmering for so long without coming to the forefront yet. Probably many people thought that it was substantially settled, on account of this quiet, but it looks more like the two camps just quietly went their separate ways.

This is also why religious groups outside of Westboro mostly talk about focusing on the family and the social problems associated with single-parent households and divorce. (If you are not a member of these groups or do not have friends and family who are members of these groups, you are probably unaware of what this advocacy looks like. See also: the entire public policy of the Catholic church on this matter.)

FYI: This is how you can have an eminently nice person with nothing but respect for the intrinsic human rights and dignity of homosexuals, but who still votes for Prop 8 or Amendment 1 or a similar measure.

And you know what? What goes on between two people in private of their bedroom is nobody's business. What benefits the government makes available to people, through spending the public purse or giving people tax breaks or mandating certain sorts of treatment... that kind of is peoples' business. It's a public-policy question, and structuring public policy one way or another impacts society in several ways - including, in some jurisdictions, making your ability to operate as a business contingent on you performing some services that you might not want to perform (cf. New Mexico photography etc etc).

(Postscript. No particular stance for or against Proposition 8, or for or against Amendment 1, or any other public policy recommendation, is hereby endorsed. The following ideas are hereby endorsed: Gay people are human beings and deserve a substantially identical set of human rights and dignity as any other human being is entitled to receive. People who treat them otherwise may be some sort or another of monster. The extent to which these rights overlap with public policy in the matter of issuing marriages is controversial. Voters who support Amendment 1 or Prop 8, electorally or fiscally, are not monsters for doing so. Pluralism is good and it would be great if we all had some way to get along. Maybe we can start with more understanding.)

(Post-postscript. Added adoption to the list of misc. benefits as it is of special relevance as a way for a married gay couple to raise children.)

I think this is where the problem crops up. Many of the people commenting here see things as strictly black-and-white. Opposition to gay marriage is bigotry, support for gay marriage is sunshine and roses.

The problem is that it's impossible to reason with anyone who takes such a stance, because many of the arguments raised here are suggestive that any form of opposition to gay marriage is illustrative of hatred and bigotry against gays. There is absolutely no middle ground. Which is rather ironic, because the other arguments raised accuse the opponents of gay marriage of doing precisely the same thing and accepting no middle ground!

In another thread last week, I recall a particular discussion that implicitly suggested that those who believe the state shouldn't recognize any form of marriage are closet bigots, so I'm not entirely sure what to take away from this. It seems to me that there's far too much emotional investment to enjoy rational discourse. I can certainly understand why such emotions are raging uncontrollably, but as someone who is neither married nor really believes the state should have involvement in marriage (or at least, it should strictly be up to the state to be aware of certain long term relationships under contract law--not what those relationships are), it's a bit beyond me as to why there's so much disgust. I don't feel so compelled to hate someone based on their beliefs, much less stop using a specific browser for reasons other than technical merits.

Side note: I admit that I had to do some digging around to figure out why OkCupid was urging users to stay away from Firefox since I visited the site with Chromium. I had completely forgotten about the tempest in a teapot that occurred when Eich was appointed to CEO. I can't help but think this is something that's intensely fascinating and of interest to a relatively small but vocal minority of people, although going by my small sample size of one is probably disingenuous. Still, there are more important issues IMO, and using/supporting an open and standards compliant browser (and open source) is of far greater importance to me than someone's political stance who now happens to be CEO.

It'd be humorous to suggest a conspiracy at work here: Information about Eich's donation was dug up and clandestinely released by someone paid for by Microsoft in effort to undermine Mozilla should he ever be appointed CEO!

He's on record as having made a fairly substantial donation to the Prop 8 campaign. That may not be "Fred Phelps" — let alone "Uganda" — levels of anti-marriage-equality, but it's close enough for my purposes.

"The "not as bad as" argument, or the fallacy of relative privation, is a form of the moral equivalence fallacy that takes note of the existence of things that are worse than what is actually under discussion - for different purposes, as outlined below. It's popular with people who know perfectly well they're doing something wrong; being fully aware that they're doing something wrong, they feel compelled to attempt to justify it and do so by pointing to other, usually worse, actions."

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy

No one is making the argument that you are objecting to or using a worse situation to justify anything.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Strawman

I said the situation in Uganda can't be considered "close" by any stretch of imagination to the situation in California until recently, before gay marriage was legalized. I also implied reaction should be proportionate to the degree of wrong. How the heck did you infer "opposing gay marriage is positive" from that?

You're a random person on the internet, I personally wouldn't rely on any implication to be clearly communicated. When in doubt, be explicit. This is even more important in threads (like these) where people run around with their heads on fire.

Not just flippantly saying "They can't get married, but they're still alive, right?"

Maybe thinking that it's ALL tragic is the best point of view in moving this world forward.

No, just marriage. His $1000 annulled existing gay marriages, and the situation didn't recover until 2013. You can't seriously expect that there won't be LOTS of people REALLY PISSED OFF ABOUT THAT. You can think they're wrong ... but those people are your prospective customers too.

They just wouldn't be recognized by the state. That is way different than what OKCupid is trying to say.

Well, Prop 8 specifically didn't try to do that, but that isn't unheard of in the US: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/10/indiana...

> They just wouldn't be recognized by the state.

Okcupid may have worded that badly, but the problem doesn't go away because it changed from "illegal" to "refusal to recognize/allow". It's still fundamentally terrible.

And yes, I recognize the difference between the two - I'm fully aware this country made interracial marriages like mine straight out illegal and not just unrecognized up until 50 years ago, and it's only been a week since I got married and I've already had to deal with thinly veiled racism.