(I'm an atheist gay person. Don't you dare try to claim I have an agenda here.)

Q: How do reasonable people on the religious right explain their disdain for gay marriage?

A:

It's complicated.

First, let's assume that there is a subset of the hardcore religious right that feels it is okay to impose their morality on the LGBT population via the law. These people do not appreciate their country and the freedoms they have. These people are bigoted and will be for the remainder of their sad life. There is no pleasing these people. They are not worth considering.

What about the rest of the religious right? I'm picturing the rural Alabama family that never misses church and has their preist over twice a year for supper. These people are not hateful. In fact, they're probably some of the nicest people you know. They're well educated. But they do believe in the bible, and there is no negotiation on this. They don't hate atheists, but they pity them. They wish for gay people to be happy, but they think that they are morally wrong.

How have these people historically rationalized a lack of support for gay marriage? What has their reasoning been?

To understand their reasoning you must understand the history Paul talks about in this article. Marriage was a religious sacrament, and certainly predates 1776. This is where we get our wierd traditions like walking the girl down the isle as a property exchange. Families decided marriages for their children such that they would both gain out of this, like a trade. You know, like most of the world still does today.

But the state recognizes it in the form of marriage licensing, And this the spawn of our current system.

So back to the question: How do they explain themselves.

Simple: They don't want to see their religious sacrament be appropriated by the state and made into something entirely different from the commitment they do that is ordained by God and all that bullshit. This is what Paul means when he says it offends him. It offends him to see the government use his religious term for alternative things. It doesn't offend him because he thinks we're gross.

The solution has clearly always been to give everyone civil partnerships and be done with this. Recognizing it in the first place is bullshit IMHO. But the LGBT community are a bunch of emotional idiots who think it's more important that they're allowed to technically call their event a wedding than to be able to see their partner in the hospital or raise a child.

It's fucking infuriating to me. I understand where the religious folk are coming from, they don't want the state to insult their religion. I think that all my LGBT people have every right to just call our thing a wedding and a marriage anyway and insult them if we want to, but why should the government be able to insult the religious people?

On the books i don't see why it's important what we call it.. As an atheist, I would like to be able to designate a partner and not go through the process called "marriage". I find it to be a violation of my religious sensibilities.