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OBVIOUSLY the state -- the Federal government, at least -- has no business regulating marriage! Just make civil unions available to everybody and base all official rights and obligations now associated with marriage on civil union, which would automatically ensue from marriage. (Or maybe it wouldn't have to. Since there are official DISadvantages to marriage, why should you be penalized because your religion doesn't allow you to live together unofficially? I can't imagine there'd be much call for it, but I can imagine there being marriages which existed ONLY in the eyes of God and not at all in the eyes of the state -- perhaps in the case of two older people who wanted the comfort of marriage without the legal complications for their individual estates.)

I can certainly understand the discomfort some people might have with extending the sacrament of marriage to people of the same sex, but unless you allow civil unions, I can see no argument for banning gay marriage. It's a clear violation of equal protection under the law and of the separation of church and state. And I can't imagine how any real conservative could possibly favor a Constitutional amendment further limiting the authority and independence of the individual states by imposing a new Federal mandate.

(Then again, I can't imagine why all conservatives aren't up in arms over the Patriot Act and the Administration's suspension of habeas corpus. How are you going to feel when a Democratic Administration is in office with the right to detain people secretly? If you believe in the Bill of Rights, you can't stand by while any portion of it is denied to anyone! Indefinitely long, secret detention of people without charges or trial, without access to an attorney or communication with their families -- that's terrifying, and it's Un-American. What was the Ben Franklin quote? Something like, "A people which tries to barter its freedom for security will end up with neither"?)