In other words, if Unitarians have the right to marry (as indeed they and all religions do), then on that basis, how can I be prevented from marrying under the law? Perhaps the “right” sort of lawsuit is one that defends my rights as a CHRISTIAN, not simply as a gay male. I wonder if a lawyer could make a good argument using this.

This doesn’t actually show a flaw in your thinking, but in theirs: a stable and healthy environment for raising kids is, bot sides agree, one where both parents are married. Therefore the logical thing to do to improve that is anything which reduces the chances of couples getting divorced – and if that’s your goal, gay marriage can work in its favour. Gay men and women in straight marriages are likely to divorce irrespective of whether or not there’s the prospect of a gay marriage afterwards. In many cases children are involved – gay men in particular are likely to have a straight marriage if having kids is important to them.

A good way of preventing this kind of situation occurring is to prevent these loveless straight marriages from happening in the first place. Legalising gay marriage and adoption by gay couples is one of the least complex ways of doing this, and has the added bonus of making hundreds of thousands of adoptive parents available.

The option proposed by the Prop 8 supporters is to try to force people to comply with their particular form of morality, something which has already had disastrous consequences elsewhere. Uganda was once considered a leader in combating the AIDS pandemic in Africa, however the government was forced to scrap its highly successful ABC campaign (Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom) by American religious groups who had the ear of the President Bush and wanted a ban on the promotion of the use of condoms. As a result much of the progress made has been lost. In their arrogance, the Religious Right decided to impose their religious morals on the Ugandans without any regard for the local culture. They expected Ugandans to quite suddenly, overnight, transform their culture to comply with the Religious Right’s dogma; it didn’t happen, and thousands are expected to die as a result.

The Prop 8 supporters want the same thing in America – their goal is to force the transformation of the nation’s culture to comply with their religious beliefs, irrespective of the consequences. We’ve already seen in Uganda that basic human rights are irrelevant to the Religious Right; the same is true in the US: the Religious Right has a long track-record of using the First Amendment to bash other people while at the same time acting as if the necessary restrictions it puts in place do not apply to them.

Also, all the available data indicates that gay divorce rates are very close to those of straights, with the CP dissolution rate for gay male British couples lower than the UK divorce rate. Despite our opponents’ claims that gay couples (and gay male couples in particular) aren’t stable relationships, allowing gay couples to marry would not result in an increase in the divorce rate. So IMO the question the Court must deal with on the divorce issue is which approach is the best one: to go down a route which will only succeed if people comply with someone else’s religious dogma, or a route where individuals are afforded the flexibility and respect to follow their own beliefs. It seems to me that the choice isn’t really much of a choice at all – if the Court chooses to side with the Prop 8 crowd they’ll be allowing a “law respecting an establishment of religion”, and that is not something America can afford to let happen.

[Webmaster's note: I agree completely. I'm just accepting the other side's statement for the sake of argument, in order to illustrate the difference of evaluating it based on rational basis scrutiny vs. strict scrutiny. Personally, I think it fails it either way. Hopefully the judge will, too.]