I wish to add that one of the reasons that "gay marriage" as an issue should not be decided in courtrooms is because the case brought to them will only involve the two adults with standing in that case. Shouldn't future children be represented? Legal mechanism doesn't give them standing or consideration.
That legal history culminated in the Founding Documents.
For the purposes of this thread regarding marriage, homosexuality, and child rearing - the essential issues are unavoidable.
Each nation has two absolute requirements to actualize or else go extinct.
Requirement 1: Maintain and pass to the next generation the lands which are that nation's homeland.
Requirement 2: Raise and acculturate the next generation of that nation.
Obviously, failure of any of the above results in national extinction.
This thread also is deeply mired in the philosophical/legal quagmire know as “Legal Perfection”. “Legal Perfection” is a concept discussed in Ancient Greece, and discarded as impossible to attain.
“Legal Perfection” holds that the laws should deal equally with all citizens, in all cases. Admirable, but those Greeks also noted that as Athens was a city with 40,000 citizens(slaves, foreigners, etc were not considered), human activities were so complex that laws able to deal justly with all, in all cases were not possible.
Those Greeks then decided that rather than rely on a rigid set of laws which could not be so written as to be just, that human judgement would have to be relied upon.
The culmination/perfection of that wise, even sagacious decision was the American legal system with written laws constrained by the Constitution, administered by grand juries, petite juries, judges, and the most crucial part - a well acculturated citizenry who regulated their own behavior to the degree that system could function.
Back to “Courts, Queers, & Kids”. Remembering the essentiality of acculturating the next generation, from Moses, through Jesus, and to the time of the founding of the American Republic, indeed, until the time of “Woodstock Nation”, the family was assumed to be one man and one woman.
Marriage was given special and preferential status because the married had been proven throughout more than 3,000 years to be the best way to raise and acculturate the next generation.
As queers can not reproduce, they do not qualify to receive the benefits society gives to those who devote so much of their life and labor to raise acculturated children.
To say that queers/queer marriages, or children raised by queers, are “acculturated” is transparent sophistry in light of the above mentioned societal imperatives.
Of those hoping to perfect Legal Perfectionism” or equate Queer Marriage” with a real marriage, I can only say “Bah - Humbuggery!”