>Homosexuality has existed as long as humans, it's all over our recorded, and spoken, history.

OK.

>The legal problem is mostly about the word "marriage" and nothing else. Sure, we could fix everything by changing tons of laws (LOTS and LOTS) - or we could federally re-define marriage and be done with it. Or as a Canadian PM said "Different but equal is not equal".

Indeed. I do not assert that offering civil unions in lieu of marriage represents an equivocation between heterosexual and homosexual coupling. This is precisely why people find the option of civil unions more agreeable -- it doesn't equivocate the relationship.

>An adopted child with two loving dads or moms is better than an institutionalized child with the state raising them.

I'm not sure this is self-evident, but obviously nobody wants children to have to be institutionalized either. If we have the option of adopting a child to a homosexual couple now or a heterosexual couple later, I believe the child will be better off with the heterosexual couple. It is our responsibility to ensure we give wards of the state over to a healthy home environment; in my opinion, same-sex adoptive parentage is an automatic disqualification.

>And who says that there is no mommy-type figure in the picture too? You don't know everyone's personal business.

Mommy-type figures function differently than natural mothers or permanent adoptive live-in mothers. It is possible that a mother figure like the latter would exist, but not likely or common. Do you suggest we allow gay couples to adopt only if there is a committed permanent live-in woman who can function as a mother-type figure? If so, your hypothetical may be relevant.

>And news fella - homosexual women are physically capable of having children, and homosexual men are physically capable of providing their needed bit to get a woman pregnant.

This isn't news to me. I was already aware of it, but I suppose it's good to clarify in case someone thinks that one is automatically sterilized when he or she engages in homosexual activity.

This is basically semantics. The point I intended, which you probably understood, is that homosexual partners cannot procreate together; i.e., the biological material of two same-sex partners cannot combine to produce offspring, automatically depriving the offspring of at least one biological parent (again, assuming a typical relationship where one couple occupies a single home as an independent family unit) of true "parentage" by that parent, even if his/her identity is known and the couple and child remain in contact (which, as I understand it, is not necessarily common). As I said, many do not think this matters anymore because they were similarly deprived or because they know many people who were similarly deprived and "turned out OK". While I agree it's not guaranteed to create problems, it's certainly not ideal, and not a condition the government should take special action to encourage.

>To your last paragraph - why do we bother to elect lawmakers and have a government if not to make law.

They should make law, but not law that serves primarily to impose a certain ideological perspective on an individual. Laws should be made to protect communal life and preserve the communal right and control of property. Anything that does not sufficiently threaten these fundamental principles should be left to individual freedom of conscience. As the function of redefining marriage to include homosexuality is primarily to establish a governmental endorsement on homosexual behavior, it doesn't pass muster.

>Plenty of heterosexual couples cannot bear children either - should they not be allowed to marry?

No, because a) children aren't the entire basis of my opposition. There is also the question of whether the state wants to encourage homosexual coupling and promote the idea as an acceptable life choice. And b) it's a matter of respect and hope. We rarely know when someone is infertile ahead of marriage, and in the cases where we do, we do not know that the infertility will be impossible to cure over the course of the marriage. Furthermore, even if we are assured fertility will be impossible to restore, we allow the dignity of marriage out of respect for the potential and representation of heterosexual union.