Hold on, that's the part I've missed. What are the highlights of your argument as far as this claim is concerned?
For starters (and there have been whole threads done on this), you have the vile treatment of one Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for her simply answering a question about marriage with her belief that it should be between a man and a woman.
Then, there's a case in New Mexico (where gay "marriage" isn't even legal), where the owners of a wedding chapel were fined over $6,000, after a suit from a "human rights" firm, for their refusal to perform a "committment ceremony" for a lesbian couple.
I'm still not convinced that mob rule is the way to go on issues like these, but do agree that we play with the rules we have.
That's not "mob rule". Otherwise, the election that put Obama into office would be considered as such. We have a democracy and, barring any constitutional breaches, the majority rules in a democracy.
A lot of intellectually dishonest individuals on the pro-8 side argued that 'this is only about the definition of the term marriage', but I don't think there's much precedent for determining definitions of terms by popular vote. Shouldn't they have taken the argument to Merriam-Webster instead??
This isn't intellectually dishonest. How can you claim that someone is being denied the right to participate in an institution, if that instutition isn't clearly defined?
Take interracial marriages (particularly those between blacks and whites). With marriage being defined as a union between a man and a woman, that means that a white man and a black woman or a black man and a white woman should be able to marry without any punitive actions taken against them. That was the basis of the
Loving v. Virginia case.
Remember also that Utah had to ditch the polygamy stuff, in order to be a part of the United States. That's affirmed in the 19th-century federal case,
Murphy v. Ramsey, which states among other things:
For, certainly, no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the co-ordinate states of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement. And to this end no means are more directly and immediately suitable than those provided by this act, which endeavors to withdraw all political influence from those who are practically hostile to its attainment. That is the definition of marriage there. And, it is that definition that is being challenged by gay activists.
Note: I wasn't able to have any conversations either during or after the campaign with secular supporters of the measure. Everyone I encountered on the pro side was coming from a religious perspective, so that's why many of my statements have appeared to 'target' them.
That being said, I don't know many religions that would be happy if non-religious or anti-religious people decided to vote on their right to worship as they please.
Once again, that falls under the category of a constitutional BREACH. There is a clear, spelled-out-in-black-and-white, clause in the Constutition that says that can't happen. No such thing exists for gay "marriage".
