Kelly,
I know you've said you are busy with finals (Good Luck!), and so I don't know if you will be able to come back and answer this question or not, but I will throw it out there for you, or for anyone else who wishes to address it:
How can the problem be overly puritan Christians and their literal reading of the Bible, when I have shown that this definition of marriage has been UNIVERSAL to ALL religions and ALL societies (including communist/ATHEIST societies) throughout history? Proposition 8 was passed by a majority vote. Surely the majority of people in California (California, of all places) aren't puritan Christians!
I will also take the opportunity to ask another question which I have alluded to before, but which has never been addressed.* What, exactly, do you mean by word "right"? A lot of people are throwing this term around, but no one is defining it.
I maintain that the so-called "right" to marry whomever one pleases is not a right at all. In America, no person has the "right" to marry (a) a minor, (b) a close relative, (c) a person who is already married, or (d) a person of the same sex.
I have asked why no one is fighting for the "rights" of persons who were refused marriage under restrictions a, b, or c. The answer I get is that there are valid reasons for restrictions a, b, and c.
And that takes me right back to my original supposition. If we agree that society can restrict marriage when it has valid reasons to do so, then we are implicitely agreeing that the ability to marry whomever one pleases, with no restrictions, is not a right!
If we can agree on that, then we can look objectively at the issue at hand, and determine whether or not society has valid reasons for defining marriage the way it has.
* Edited to add that this question is not specifically addressed to Kelly, who never even used the word, but to others who have.
