Gay marriage ought to be legal.

1. Your argument is interesting, but I find it somewhat uncompelling. The very base of your argument appears to be that marriage has religious origins, and therefore we must adhere to its religious origins and make it a purely nonsecular institution. This argument has, in my view, several problems. Social conservatives in the United States often do give a similar argument from tradition, that marriage "always has been between a man and a woman". Ignoring the fact that the statement itself is not true, both this argument and your argument suffer from a problem common to appeals to tradition: our common morality as expressed today in the United States would find "traditional marriage" (or the religious tradition of marriage) to be abhorrent. Marriage as a religious institution was an institution of oppression against women, having its origins in the idea that the man, in providing for the protection of the woman, could then discipline her as such. Indeed, in Islamic societies today, this still remains the view. We have grown in a society where women are considered, nominally, equal to men; they are able to vote, own property, hold jobs, and generally they are free to act independently of their husbands. Once again, this was not always the case: obviously things such as women's suffrage were extremely controversial whenever they came up. It was because the religious view was rejected in favour of the secular view that these rights were recognised. The religious basis of marriage is abhorrent and we have no reason to affirm that this motivates us to ANY action unless you can provide a rational basis for why specific components of it ought to. By its own, you cannot simply say "Marriage has a religious basis" and except us to take one action or another because of that, as if we do then ultimately we regress to a period where marriage was an institution that took away liberty rather than affirmed it. 2. As you move onto answering your first question, you then cross-apply your logic by saying that marriage, being defined religiously, then must exclude gay marriage. As I have already demonstrated, marriage ought not be defined in religious terms, for the religious origin of marriage is barbarous and incompatible with the world that we now find ourselves in. Thus, to say that we should accept the conservative Christian interpretation of the Bible in prohibiting gay marriage does not follow, for we would also then be forced to affirm a variety of laws that I am sure we can both agree are not appropriate as state or federal regulation. However, you sidestep an important component of the debate: marriage is *not* merely a religious institution. The US government, and the governments of the several states, confer upon married couples certain legal rights and responsibilities. This is a secular benefit bestowed upon by a secular institution. If your view on what "God" considers marriage is correct, then God will not recognise any gay marriages that the US government does. If we were to conflate Church and the State, this may be significant, but the United States is not a theocracy and it has a well-established doctrine to separate church and state. This separation is beneficial to everyone involved, for it prevents the teachings of any one religion from infringing upon the liberty of those who do not believe that religion. It is among the highest affirmations of our liberty, and indeed in US national lore it is among the reasons why the US was founded: there were many who sought to escape religious persecution in the United Kingdom. Given how beneficial and important the separation of Church and State is to our nation and to our liberty, you need to provide an exceedingly good and rational reason as to why this separation ought to be overriden. To merely say "Well, marriage came from religion, and therefore religion should be able to dictate to the State what it will call marriage" is uncompelling for, ultimately, it appears to be an argument that asserts its a priori correctness without actually demonstrating it: you haven't demonstrated how we can go from "marriage has a religious origin" to "marriage ought to be controlled by conservative Christianity". Your conclusion does not flow from its premise, and is thus just another contention that requires logical support. The case of Loving v. Virginia illustrates quite well what I mean: religious arguments were very common in the debate over whether interracial marriage ought to be allowed. The argument given by a trial judge was that "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.". Should this view be affirmed merely because it appeals to religion? Of course not - the importance of liberty is so great that it far exceeds any religiously-based argument. The Church (ANY church) ought to never be allowed to dictate government, for that warps the perception of both and inevitably results in the violation of the common liberty of the people. You say that the US is majority rule, but in fact the US is not majority rule! As I mentioned in my opening post, the US has a court system that is able to invalidate majority rule in order to protect the rights of the people. In the US senate, 60% is needed to end debate and pass legislation, not 50+%. The President is able to veto legislation he considers unwise, and a SUPERMAJORITY is required. The Constitution can only be amended by a supermajority in Congress AND a 75% majority of the states. This all shows us that the structure of the US system is not to allow for uncontrolled majority rule, but rather to allow for liberty. Democracy affirms liberty to a great extent, and no other system of goverment could protect the rights of the people so well as democracy, but it is not democracy that we are after; mob rule was decried by the founding fathers then, and it remains a bad idea today. Rather, we are after libety. Ultimately, while your argument is different than that of the person I was wanting to debate against, it falls prey to the same problems: Your argument takes liberty and says "Hmm, that isn't very important" and sets it aside in a blind pursuit of religious dogma, where such dogma has always been recognised to be opposed to the freedom of the people and where such dogma was intentionally restricted by our government so that the freedoms and protections of nonbelievers may be upheld. This may or may not be an issue if the dogma itself was good, but repeatedly throughout history, on the subject of marriage and on other subjects, religious dogma has resulted in great infringements upon what we recognise today to be morally good. Very few would stand up and say that slavery was a desirable institution, that denying blacks civil rights was the Godly thing to do, that oppressing women was okay. Even before the founding of the US, religious-based ideals protected the aristocracies and the kings of old as the people rose up against them. Everyone should be allowed to believe what they please, and if a Christian believes that their religion bans gay marriage, then I would always defend the right of that Christian to not get a gay marriage. However, the views of people's religious beliefs should be confined to the free exercise of their religion individually. No religion should have the power to dictate law or penalty, unless such law or penalty can also be backed up on a rational basis. (My argument is continued in the comments section - read it!)