Marriage is societal and largely defined by the more mainstream beliefs within that society. Look at the diversity of marriage around the world, some places allow polygamy, others allow SSM and others only have hetero marriages. They also have different terms for divorce. Maybe entitled homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to tell the majority of individuals in a state that their moral views on marriage should be entertained and forced into law regardless of what the society they live in thinks or believes. You can look at it either way.
The trouble is that religious people began looking to the government to lift up, encourage and validate their own institutions. This will ALWAYS come back to bite religious people. Don't look to the government to do these things for religion, and you won't have, in the end, religious words (like you believe marriage is) being co-opted by people who don't agree with your view of those words. The truth is this: 53% of the public agree with marriage equality. Now you have a majority of the public wanting this equality, what say you about the rule of the majority? You cannot stand in the way of this thing: A word you believed held religious significance, but was made part of an inclusive system, is now being wrenched out of the hands of some of the religious entirely. I say some of the religious because there are some religious people who believe gay people should be married to one another.
It will happen every single time you give government authority over "religious" things: It will seem to go your way at first, but in the end it will not be to your liking. It will not be to your liking because it will eventually be the case that other religious people will disagree with you, or secular people will be in the majority, or there will be a coalition of people who disagree with you. This will ALWAYS happen.
So the lesson in this matter is broader: Stop trying to make the government the tool of religion. Seek to ensure that government cannot be the tool of religion, so that everyone,
you,
the other sect, and
the secular ALL have the liberty to live as they please. This applies to all sorts of things: Funding religious charities with taxpayer money, creating crosses and other religious displays on public land, putting "In God We Trust" on money. What if we now fought to say "In God
s We Trust", instead? It is, after all, true isn't it (at least with regard to ALL theists)?
In the case of marriage, if it was ever indeed a religious institution, rather than merely a societal one, then it should never have been given structure and form and benefits by the government. A societal one should have always been in place instead, and marriages would have been the purview of religions entirely.
But again, now that the religious have co-opted government power for their own use, and have legislatively institutionalized marriage, they are hoisted on their own petard in the matter, because decent people have won the day. The best you can do now is to get government "out of religion" by seeking to have marriages turned into civil unions, which is what you should have been doing in the first place. It is certainly what I wanted in the first place. Perhaps finally we can agree on this one thing. But, it may now be too late for this, because the die may be cast: Conservative Religion rolled the dice, and are on the losing side.
