Your formulation is circular but its effect is still to confirm that the term "gay" is ill-defined (lacking definitive characteristics) and cannot legitimately be used as a constitutional classification based on an immutable characteristic.

Two men show up for a license to gain access to the special status of marriage. They are ineligible.

You might assume these men are gay, but they are both straight men.

Some time later, the judiciary imposes SSM. The men return to the license office to gain access to the legal status of SSM.

They are both eligible and straight.

If access to SSM status is not denied based on a legal requirement for gayness, then, your formulation is demonstrably false.

There is no same-sex sexual basis for issuing a license for SSM. Also, no gay identity requirement.

Maybe you meant something else when you used the oxymoronic term "gay marriage"?

Where do I begin. First of all, according to the US Constitution, marriage was never intended to be federally regulated (licensed). It has always been left to the states and will continue to be so.

Next, you have absolutely got to be joking about children and families being irrelevant to the definition of marriage. I don't even think Judge Walker in the Prop 8 case buys that argument, that marriage is just between two people who supposedly 'love' each other and have a committed relationship. That's fine, but it's not marriage. Oh, and please don't get me started with how changing that leads to the questions asked earlier about child marriage and multiple marriages and so on.

But here's my problem: This trial isn't about same-sex marriage at all, but trying to force the acceptance of the gay lifestyle on all of us, to quote San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, "Whether you like it or not." Gay activist groups are trying to force our state and even our federal government to legitimize something the majority of people in this country don't want to be legitimized, mainly because it is the only 'relationship' that denies a child the possibility being raised by both a mom and dad. And please don't talk about divorce and single parents. Situations happen that are not optimal for children, but we shouldn't legislate them.

And as far as your contention that religious beliefs are irrelevant, I'll remind you respectfully that our country was founded on the freedom of religion and that we are guaranteed the right to live our faith and even to discuss it aloud on the street corners if we wish. It's called the freedom of speech. No one - not evey a gay activist - has the right to tell me I cannot vote according to my faith. Absolutely no one, and there is no judge who will tell me I cannot, at least not if he wants to keep his job, since doing so would be completely unconstitutional, and that includes Judge Walker. But if SSM is legitimized it makes it almost 'illegal' for me to talk about what the Bible says about sexuality and marriage, or to observe the tenets of my religion, which may not, for example, allow my business to cater a gay wedding or even a doctor to perform in-vitro on a same-sex couple. That's just not right.

Gosh!

"Define gay.

It is a socio-political construct — a group identity — of very recent invention."

Chairm, if two men want to get married, they're gay.

I thought not.

You said: "This is not an issue that can be left up to the states to decide individually."

DOMA is supported by a significant portion of elected representatives, and of the electorate, who believe it diminishes the need for a pro-marriage amendment to the US Constitution. End DOMA and begin the ratification process, I would guess.

End it through an abuse of judicial review, as per your comment, and you'd confirm that support for DOMA translates into support for curtailing the over reach of the judiciary on this very issue by constitutionalizing DOMA and deciding the national question with a nationwide answer.

As with slavery, the amending process can provide a valid and robust check on the self-empowerment of the judiciary.

* * *

We talk of Responsible Procreation, but SSMers switch to procreation -- of any and all kinds. They do not face the actual disagreement.

Chuck, you invoked a rule of argumentation that if something is not legally required, then, it is not essential to marriage.

When people enter the social institution they say, I do, to the marital presumption of paternity. Consent to all that marriage is, that is a legal requirement. And the legal presumption of paternity is vigorously enforced in our legal system. It also has an overflow effect outside of marriage due to its opposite-sexed sexual basis. The reliability of the presumption is much higher within marriage than outside. That's reason enough to show preferential status for marriage.

You just argued that the special reason for the special status of marriage must be abolished because, according to you, it is unconstitutional.

Sex integration is legally required, also, but you argue for the abolition of the man-woman criterion and the sexual basis of marriage. That means you also would destroy justification for the lines of eligibility and ineligibility.

None of those lines include a "straight' criterion for eligibility nor a "gay" criterion for ineligibility. So you are not really talking about legal requirements, afterall.

Indeed, the SSM campaign does not propose, and no place with SSM has imposed, a legal requirement for same-sex sexual attraction, same-sex sexual behavior, same-sex romance, or even gay identity.

Legal requirements you abolish and legal requirments you depend on only in the form of phantoms ... that makes for a very poor argument for SSM.

Religious beliefs are irrelevant, because (1) the United States is not theocracy, and (2) churches will continue to be free to conduct or deny ceremonies to whomever they want.

Procreation and parenting are irrelevant, since couples do not have to marry to have children, and the ability or even desire to have children is not a prerequisite for getting a marriage license.

This is simply a matter of equal treatment under the law. Contrary to what Prop. 8 defender Andrew Pugno would like people to believe, the "domestic partnership" provisions for Gay couples in California are inferior to legal marriage in many ways. In California, separate is most definitely NOT equal. And at the federal level, there is still that pesky Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which is clearly in violation of the 14th Amendment and the "Full Faith & Credit" clause of the Constitution.

The quest for marriage equality by Gay couples has absolutely nothing to do with Straight (i.e. heterosexual) couples. Nothing is changing for them. Nothing is happening to “traditional marriage.” Most people are Straight, and they will continue to date, get engaged, marry and build lives and families together as they always have. None of that will change by allowing Gay couples to do the same. This is really not any sort of a “sea change” for marriage, since the only difference between Gay and Straight couples is the the gender of the two persons in the relationship.