Again: Believing that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, because marriage has a religious connotation to them, is not bigotry.

It's a stupid fucking belief, and it leads to seperate but equal bullshit, but it's not homophobic on its own.

Except all marriages are civil marriages - and the government has to treat all equally. that is all. Your church, temple, or mosque can be as exclusionary and ignorant as they want to be. that's fine, and protected free speech. But the government shouldn't give rights to some and not all (inheritance, consent, tax breaks etc).

Well, no, that's the point.

There are civil unions, and there are marriages - and if it was simply about "rights" and "benefits", then people wouldn't give a c*ap which group they were in.

However, even though they have civil unions (in many countries/states), they also want to redefined marriage.

I'm not saying that's wrong or right - that's an argument I won't go into here.

However, to try to pretend that this is anything but redefining something is pretty deceptive.

Maybe they'll win, and we will redefine marriage. Who knows.

You keep saying this throughout the thread. You are misinformed. Marriage and civil unions are legally different things with different rights, responsibilities, and scope.

They are legally the same in Connecticut and other states. Not all, but in some. But it's not equal in the "institutional" sense so we should just redefine marriage in states instead of building civil unions with the same framework as marriages and have two seperate but equal legal frameworks.

Fortunately, momentum is building for marriage equality here in Georgia. Maybe this state isn't so bad after all. The editor of the local small town paper even came out in support.

Marriage and civil unions embody the same legal rights in the US (at least, in the states that they were created so far), at issue is some people beliefs that marriage as in institution should not be changed. And I don't agree with that, "seperate but equal" is personally unacceptable to me.

I'm just trying to explain what his (assumed) beliefs are, and pointing out that his donation and beliefs shouldn't automatically label him as "anti-gay."

Says who? This is such a weird statement. These people are treating gays unequally, why do they get a pass if they are choosing to follow homophobic dogma?

If a religion said black people were cursed and had no souls, there wouldn't be so much hemming and hawing over whether or not they were racist. (Articles about the Mormon church all mention its "racist past".)