If there were no state benefits for those married, of course. But there are. Both opposing gay marriage AND not opposing that benefit system is patently discriminatory - how could it be anything else? It is saying 'there is no way you are going to get the same benefits as other people, because of whom you happen to love'.

I was under the impression that a sizeable amount of people are against gay marriage for purely symbolic reasons and that they would be fine with civil unions, which would grant all the same legal benefits of marriage. Under this scenario opposition to gay marriage seems more like a political/religious belief rather than a civil rights issue.

It seems like a semantic belief in that case, which doesn't seem to be worth spending $1,000 on, let alone the rest. Unfortunately, I don't share your optimism: I suspect that many of those objecting have a pathological dislike of gay people.

If this were true, then all religious bigots would simultaneously be "pro civil unions", which is like never the case.

I agree with you, they are two different tunes, but never sung simultaneously in practice.

Err, did you actually read Prop 8 legislation?

This was never about "treating people as lesser humans", despite the cawing hyperbole from the pro-homosexual-marriage faction...

This was basically a semantic debate.

Marriage, for most of recorded history, was defined as one thing.

There's a new style of relationship that's arisen in modern times, and that group wants to extend the definition of marriage to cover that as well.

Heck, in many countries, you don't even need a marriage, leg alone a civil union - simply being in a de-facto relationship (i.e. living together) will give you the same privileges (tax, medical etc.)

It was never about privileges (government's can't grant rights), but just about ideologies.

> There are a lot of rational reasons to oppose gay marriage (if you allow one their irrational premises).

How can you have a rational reason with an irrational premise? If the premise is irrational, so is anything based on it.

I disagree. Rationality is the process of deducing new knowledge from existing knowledge and axioms. Axioms generally aren't rational in this sense. "Irrational premises" were meant specifically to evoke the idea of religion, not necessarily as the opposite of "rational" used in the preceding sentence.

I genuinely don't want to rag on religious people, but I don't think that's legit. "We need to cut out peoples' hearts and offer them to the gods, because if we don't the sun won't rise" is not a "rational" argument for human sacrifice by any useful standard. No more so is "we need to deny gay people human rights because God wants us to." No amount of earnest belief makes that argument remotely valid.

So, no, there are zero rational reasons to oppose gay marriage, only irrational, bigoted reasons.

My response to the same point in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7536635