"If you respect the law, you’d agree. If you love children, you’d also agree."

Or a person can both respect the law and love children and disagree with your fragile and profoundly flawed remarks about the law and about marriage.

Indeed, as your remarks have revealed, you respect not the rule of law but the abuse of judicial review in imposing conclusions that are pre-drawn in your favor.

And as your remarks have shown, you are very selective about which children merit the protections that you have favored for some but not all.

You have ascribed ill-motive to people with whom you disagree.

I have pointed to your admitted ignorance of marriage and to your circular thinking. But I would not, and have not, said that you are motivated by less than love for children. I have pointed to your being well-intentioned.

The hyper-personalized insult adds zilch to the substantive disagreement, but it is another tell tale sign of a weak position on your part.

"Gay marriage means marriage between two people of the same gender."

Your response to Marie earlier was an admission that even you believe what you just said is false.

"Has anyone ever married the government? I know of no wedded couple who sought society’s permission or consent to be married."

The government is party to the agreement to marry. You have said that to marry is to consent to the government bennies. Consenting adults could do that in twos as well as in moresomes or onesomes. You haven't explained why this should not be so.

Instead you pose as if things should remain the way things have always been. Again, that contradicts your own stated standards.

A lone individual can enter an agreement with the government for government bennies. You said so.

When a license is issued, and eligibility criteria are enforced, the consenting adults do seek the consent of the government. That's fair when the government acts as proxy for society, as a whole -- rather than as a rubber stamp for identity politics as per the hyped emphasis on the gaycentric version of identity politics which is barey disguised in your comments.

The opinion of that court depended on "same-sex attraction and romance" for which there is no legal requirement -- neither for eligibility nor for ineligibility.

There are other examples but that one is the most blatant.

The Iowa Court opinion displayed circular thinking. You favor that, I know, but the conclusion is not based on reasoning. It is a pre-drawn conclusion. That's an abuse of judicial review.

"you refuse to accept the burden of discrimination against some couples entails if OSM only continues."

That is demonstrably false.

I have repeatedly pointed to the core of marriage upon which eligibility criteria are established.

Some consenting adults are ineligible within the opposite-sex category. The criteria are not arbitrary but are based on legitimate concerns about uniting the sexes and uniting motherhood and fatherhood. Combined, these concerns are at the core of marriage and so eligibility criteria will vary based on a society's adaptation to what marriage actually is. See the universal features.

The purpose of law is to dsicriminate. Sometimes a law might discriminate unjustly; but elibigibility criteria will always discriminate, even when it does this justly.

You have feigned interest in this, I think, when you said that some consenting adults are ineligible and that this is "fine" in your opinion. I've asked why you think that is "fine". Your response is amounts to a shrugged I-don't-know.

You said that I "refuse to acknowledge the burden on the children of SS couples"

False, again, as per my remarks about the provision for designated beneficiaries for families -- especially those with children -- who are outside the bounds of marriage. These families are defined by gayness but by needs that are experienced due to certain vulnerabilities; and these vulnerabilities arise because of the lack, or a defficiency, in sex integration and responsible procreation. Regardless of the burden incurred on society, and on these families, their arrangements remain nonmarital -- not due to unjust discrimination nor due to disregard; but rather due to just discrimination, based on what marriage actually is, and due to a steady and compassionate regard for the needs of such familes.

You said: "We should be encouraging parents of either sexual orientation to marry, and solidify their long-term commitment."

There is no sexual orientation criterion in the marriage law and none in the marital presumption of paternity. Most of the children, by far, living in same-sex households got there by marigrating with one or the other parent whose previously procreative relationship (i.e. typically marriage) entailed the presumption of paternity. Mom or dad might not be resident, but the nonresident parent's parental status remains intact -- because of the opposite-sex nature of human procreation.

Something your viewpoint would trivialize, even for these children you pose as if your flattening of marriage, and uniformed dismissal of the presumption of paternity, would serve children better than not.

Yes, I use my judgement when assessing the actual facts of marriage and the actual lines of argument used by SSMers such as yourself. Circular thinking is, in my judgement, not good enough.

When I pointed out that SSM argumentation relies on tradition you clapped your hands with glee and said that this must mean that marriage has changed. You missed two points.

1. The core meaning of marriage -- as identified by the universal features of this social institutio -- is not a tradition. Traditions of marriage are variables, as has been explained to you in other parts of our extended discussions.

2. Your arugmentation depends on the tradition of romance but SSM argumentation has repeated derided tradition as insufficient for the basis of a law. Your own rhetoric in your comments invoked this rule that tradition is changeable and thus insufficient basis for marriage law.

Taken together, your circular thinking has been dashed on the rocks of your own stated standards.

Just because SSM has no core meaning, you have chosen to play the very weak hand that would render marriage itself meaningless both at law and culturally.

Your cards are on the table for all to see.

There is a marriage culture, as per Marie's description of her concerns when she spoke of her sympathy (and more, her support) for "intimate" partners. You brushed that aside. This confirms, again, that your remarks would trivialzie the influence on the marrige culture of your proposed legal reform.

That is an unserious attitude toward marriage as a social institution -- one foundatinal to civilization and one that is the most pro-child we have.

The state doesn’t get to question opposite-sex couples what their motivations are, leading to, say, someone marrying a friend so he doesn’t get deported.

Actually, Jeff's statement is very wrong. marriage fraud is actively investigated in immigration cases.

And Jon, perhaps you can tell me how this logic from Jeffrey was "lucid"? If not lucid, how was it even reasonable?

Adultery and divorce are the ultimate abuses of marriage, and nobody wants to outlaw them.

Well, I hate to be the one to wake Jeffrey up to this fact in all his lucidness, but if he wants same-sex couples to be able to abuse marriage like others abuse it with divorce and adultery, he's barking up the wrong tree.

Adultery is definitely not recognized as a valid marriage.

Divorce, is doubly so.

And, on the b-side of that song we note that recognizing that marriage is between a man and a woman does not make same-sex relationships illegal. Nor does it make recognizing same-sex relationships illegal.

So with all that wrong in his argument, what did you find in it that was lucid?

"Me and a lot of people are unfamiliar with that concept [the marital presumption of paternity]. Whatever it is, I don’t know of anyone who got married in order to achieve or honor it."

What you don't know is irrelevant to the meaning of marriage. It is relevant your remarks in which you have repeatedly waved a dismissive hand at that of which you now readily concede you are ignorant.

This is a glaring admission on your part, given it has been explained multiple times in different ways -- including at your own request for an explanation.

Blind leading the blind, no?

Tell me, give me one point that you think that Jeff said that was lucid. Just one. Because I haven't found one yet. Maybe, however, you can present them more logically?

Thanks,