There is a certain, if not well-defined, set of facts about any other member of one's civilization (whether you define it as national, hemispherical, or global, and the things in that set are bounded by the notion of tolerance. They are the things that, by being a member of the set, you honor in others without judgement, or at least without criticism in word or action. They are the facets of another's life you agree by contract of sharing the circle are none of your business. You don't dictate shirt color, sock pattern, time of breakfast, philosophical beliefs, religion, or how often another person writes their mother, because, to put it in the vernacular, these things are none of your damned business.

The more liberally inclined in this forum, and in this country generally, believe this set of things we tolerate includes the private election of sexual practices and partners.

There simply is no objective reason why this part of a human's life should NOT be included in the band of human toleration, and this being the case the urge to instead make this question one of public scrutiny is an extension of a provincial or biased or prejudicial or intolerant mind-set.

That's the whole and entire question here, in my opinion. We're not talking about marrying outside one's species. We're talking about union between humans.

The parallels with the old bitter clichés from the Fifties about "I even have friends that are "xxx", but I wouldn't want my sister to marry one..." and "there goes the neighborhood" are a little too close for comfort. Of course this is not bigotry in the racial sense, I understand that. It's not racial hatred -- that would be very unenlightened. What it is, though, is bigotry in the sexual sense, and sexual hatred, raising its equally ugly head.

A