Thanks, Lisa. It can be nice to agree to disagree. (I love, by the way, how you say you have "gay friends who are openly conservative" rather than "conservative friends who are openly gay." I have a lot of gay friends who've said it was harder to "come out" as conservative than it was to come out as gay! lol)

I think there is such a thing a right and wrong, but that some things are SO much worse than others that it makes some of the wrongs right. For example, abortion is wrong. Period. I would be infinitely happier if every child brutally lost to abortion were instead given to a happy gay or lesbian couple where they would have a chance at a good life in a caring family. It may not be ideal, but for me there is no question as to which is right or wrong in that scenario. Life is full of shades of grey. The key is learning which battles to pick.

Show me the numbers. I suspect you just made all of that up.

It seems to me that the gay people more likely to even want to get married are the conservative ones: they just want to settle down, start their own families, and keep their private life private, But they still want to participate in traditional American society, without having to lie to their coworkers pretending to be straight. The gays on the crazy left are the ones who want to "smash monogomy" and live in open relationships because they have nothing but contempt for heterosexual marriage and traditional values. I think we should encourage conservative gays to settle down, to be sexually responsible, and to choose a healthier, happier lifestyle than their "gay ghetto" liberal counterparts. Families, whether gay or straight, stabilize society. Rampant promiscuity destabilizes it.

Plus, we'd add a few votes to the conservative cause. It's a win-win.

Nothing in Swindle's argument contradicts what you are saying, or your freedom to say so. You have reasons for condemning homosexuality. I have reasons for tolerating it. Neither has anything to do with our eligibility as conservatives or our capacity to support conservative causes.

Just because you think the media, the schools and the universities, and Hollywood are "brainwashing" people into accepting gays, what do you propose? A tyrannical crackdown on what is allowed in the media? A prohibition on gay TV characters or censored coverage of gays in the news? Again, you are free to disagree. You are free to hold your own religious views, preach them, teach them, and fight for them in court and on ballot measures. But why should that necessarily exclude someone who shares your political views on many other fronts? This "my way or the highway" mentality is doing more damage to conservative causes.

David Swindle's argument is spot on. This is a cultural issue that shouldn't be politicized, because it is going to be determined eventually by public opinion. Think about premarital sex: eighty years ago, it was still considered an abominable sin to have sex outside of marriage. Social conservatives have always been the most outspoken against this Biblically-ordained sin, but our culture has largely changed in its thinking on the matter, and many conservatives have no problem with an unmarried couple living together today. They are still entitled to believe premarital sex is wrong, to teach their kids it is wrong, but that doesn't mean it should be criminalized.

Homosexuality is the same way. Society is changing, and many conservatives no longer see it as an imminent threat to our country. Is it ideal? No, if everyone were gay, we wouldn't procreate. But that is not a threat: we do just fine populating the earth. In fact, judging from Sorba's comments, the real threat gays pose to both themselves and to others is their higher likelihood for disease, which for me sounds more like an argument *for* gay marriage rather than against it, in that a committed monogamous couple is far less likely to spread STDs. History will decide this matter, and it will do so regardless of political affiliation. It is a sad sign of our political climate that there has to be a diametrical split on ALL issues, absolutely right and absolutely wrong. Life is more complicated than that.

I think it's a rejection of reality to think that gay parents don't exist. Over 150,000 children in this country are being raised by same-sex couples and THAT is reality. Legal records need to be accurate, and the change to the passport forms makes them more accurate.

If anything, leave two blanks, so people can fill in "mother" and "father" or "father" and "father". Whatever.

I fail to see anything "militant" or "activist" about a gay or lesbian couple adopting or conceiving a child and wanting legal rights as parents. They, like most people in this country, want families, and in the absence of a known biological parent, this gives them the power to be their children's legal guardians. It is no different from heterosexual couples who do the same.

What if a child's biological parents are unknown? Do adoptive parents have no right to list themselves as parents because they aren't biologically related? If a heterosexual couple has a child through a surrogate, does that mean they don't have the right to list themselves as the parents?

The change in language solves these problems for both gay and straight couples who adopt, conceive via in-vitro fertilization, or use a surrogate mother.

The author said "Our concern in the craft of just law is not to avoid discrimination, but to ensure our discrimination applies equally to all persons... I may marry as marriage is defined in my state, and so may a homosexual. "

The problem with your reasoning is that marriage laws do not "apply equally" because of the way they discriminate based on gender. Let's take your example, with a small alteration: "If a MALE 15 year old drinks a beer, it is just as illegal as when a FEMALE 15 year old drinks a beer." That statement is true. But this, then, holds that the following should also be true: "If a man marries a woman, it is just as legal as when a female marries a woman." Our laws do not discriminate based on gender: can you think of any other legal contract that limits the gender of the parties involved? Can you think of any law that applies to men that doesn't apply to women? No: marriage laws are discriminatory, just as they were with miscegination laws, and just as they were earlier with laws forbidding marriage outside of one's religion.