Very well. I'll give a list of 46 reasons why "same-sex marriage" should be banned.
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1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Marriage is valuable because it produces children, which is why we deny marriage rights to infertile couples and old people.
3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. If gay marriage is allowed, straight marriage, such as Britney Spears' 55-hour escapade, will be less meaningful.
5. Marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all: women are property, matches are arranged in childhood, blacks can't marry whites, Catholics can't marry Jews, divorce is illegal, and adultery is punishable by death.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because majority-elected legislatures have historically protected the rights of minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
8. There is no separation between religious marriage and legal marriage, because there is no separation of church and state.
9. Devout, faithful Anglicans should never accept same-sex marriage, because it is an affront to the traditional family values upheld by Henry VIII and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and his wife, Anne Boleyn, and his wife, Jane Seymour, and his wife, Anne of Cleves, and his wife, Catherine Howard, and his wife, Catherine Parr. They all knew the meaning of marriage and none of them lost their heads over the matter.
10. Married gay people will encourage others to be gay, in a way that unmarried gay people do not.
11. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because dogs have legal standing and can sign marriage contracts.
12. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to legislative change in general, which could possibly include the legalization of polygamy, incest, marijuana, and unmuzzled pit bulls. Because we don’t know what might come down the next slippery slope, we should never change any law.
13. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
14. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to things like suburban malls and tupperware parties.
15. Legal marriage will inspire gays to mimic the straight traditions of spiritual commitment ceremonies and celebratory parties, which is currently impermissible for them to do and which they have never done before.
16. Marriage is designed to protect the well-being of children. Gay people do not need marriage because they never have children from prior relationships, artificial insemination or surrogacy, or adoption.
17. Civil unions are a good option because "separate but equal" institutions are always constitutional. In fact, compared with marriage, civil unions are so attractive that straight people are calling dibs on them.
18. A man should not be able to marry whomever a woman can marry, and a woman should not be able to marry whomever a man can marry, because in this country we do not believe in gender equality.
19. If gays marry, some of straight people's tax dollars would end up supporting families whose structure they may find morally objectionable. Clearly, it is more just to continue taking gay people's tax dollars to support straight families, who are going to heaven regardless of what anyone else thinks of them.
20. Gays should hold off on the marriage question until society is more accepting of them, because they are not part of society.
21. The people's voice must be heard on this issue. Therefore, we must have a referendum on a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, because we can't think of any other way to discuss the issue.
22. Each state should decide for itself whether gay marriage will be recognized, because there is no "full faith and credit" clause that requires states to recognize each other's institutions.
23. Gay marriage attempts to replace natural heterosexual instinct with a cultural institution. Morality demands that we subordinate institutionalized commitment to raw, unfettered, biological impulse.
24. Gay marriages could very well suffer maladies like domestic violence and substance abuse. That's why we invented the Quality Control department to pre-approve the righteousness of all marriage applicants, such as convicted serial killer Richard Ramirez who married a woman while on Death Row.
25. Those who support gay marriage aim to overthrow the dominant culture, as evidenced by their enthusiasm to participate in it.
26. If the state performs gay marriages, Christians might become more liberal and trigger more church schisms. Since the government is an arm of the church and is responsible for keeping the peace in Christian leadership councils, it should not get involved with gay marriage.
27. After gay marriage was legalized in Scandinavian countries, more heterosexual couples realized they wanted to live together and bear children without marrying first. Banning gay marriage is a good way to prevent this practice, as is banning independent thought and mandating straight marriage by age 21.
28. Heterosexual marriage was invented in the Biblical book of Genesis. Written somewhere between 1500 and 500 BCE, Genesis came as a great relief to people in many cultures, such as China, who, prior to 1500 BCE, sat around waiting for the Mesopotamians to invent the family unit.
29. Gay marriage would allow more partners and children to sign onto the family breadwinner's healthcare plan. Given that 44 million Americans do not have health insurance, it is safe to say that health insurance is not an American value.
30. The possibility of getting a gay marriage might encourage some married heterosexuals to divorce and seek a gay union instead. These marriages were obviously happy and successful, and the justices who provide gay second marriages should be charged with alienation of affection.
31. Gay marriage may hurl the populace into existential crisis and cause spontaneous divorces. Divorce triggers our moral apoplexia, but we will keep it legal. It is easier to seek the criminalization of gay marriage than the criminalization of divorce, particularly because most of us have had a few divorces.
32. Gay marriage is tainted because some of the applicants might be divorcees marrying for the second time. We oppose remarriage, and would like to ensure that no one marries more than once; therefore we will oppose the entire institution of marriage, to ensure that no one ever marries at all. That casts the net wide enough to catch all the would-be second-timers.
33. The people have the right to demand to vote on a Massachusetts constitutional amendment against gay marriage. There is no reason for proposed amendments to go through the state Legislature first, as is constitutionally required, because the Legislature doesn't spend all that many paid hours sitting around discussing the legal ramifications on behalf of ordinary citizens who are too busy with their own jobs to figure out everything at stake.
34. The arguments for gay marriage are flawed because Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has made inconsistent statements about gay marriage, and he is known for his consistency on other issues.
35. Married gay couples will find it easier to adopt children, who might then be bullied and teased by other children for who their parents are. This reflects poorly on the judgment of gays who adopt children with the risk that their child could possibly be teased. It does not, of course, imply anything about the responsibilities of heterosexual parents, whose children only pick up rocks for geological interest and couldn't have been listening when their parents made those comments about their neighbors.
36. Children of married gay couples might suffer bullying and teasing more often than children of unmarried gay couples, because playground bullies are sensitive to the nuances of contract law.
37. It is reasonable and fair to institute "civil unions" that provide all the rights and responsibilities of marriage, but we cannot apply the holy, mystical word "marriage" to this contract. Deriving from the Latin <i>maritare</i>, "marriage" evokes the dignity of the typical Roman man who engaged in licentious sex with both sexes until he reached middle age, at which time he <i>maritared</i> a teenage girl to bear his children.
38. According to the three proposed "compromise" Massachusetts constitutional amendments defeated by the Legislature on Feb. 11 and 12, 2004, the best way to "protect the unique relationship of [heterosexual] marriage" is to institute civil unions that are in every way identical to it.
39. God created the institution of marriage, just after he created 2.9% APR automobile financing, student loans, HMOs, and divorce.
40. We must defer to the President's opinion on gay marriage, since the Republican party was given its authority by God. As it is written: "Republican and Democrat created He them." Paul elaborated: "Democrats, submit to the Republican."
41. In San Francisco, where renegade officials have married same-sex couples for the past several weeks, experts suggest that the city may suffer an earthquake in about ten years. Geological experts, that is. But good Christians don't recognize the opinion of Earth scientists, who falsely claim the Earth is 4.5 billion years old; they get their seismic information from their preachers, who say the earthquake's coming next week.
42. Allowing same-sex marriage could increase gay public displays of affection, because marriage has historically been proven to stimulate couples' interest in sex.
43. Making civil marriage available to same-sex couples could spur the wedding industry, and businesses would sure hate to pay taxes on all that profit.
44. Straight men are opposed to gay marriage because they would prefer that gay men try to be straight and compete with them for access to women, trimming down the pool of eligible dates to make courtship more challenging and exciting.
45. The country can't afford to provide benefits for married gay couples. That's why Bush would never consider spending $150 million on programs that encourage more straight people to get married.
46. Gay marriage is wrong because children might be led to think that it is right and that would clearly be wrong.
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Note: My religion says nothing of homosexuality being right, wrong, or neither. It's just not in there.
