Another thing, John. It is facile to assume that being a "leftist" automatically means that one wants to give freedom, equality, and civil rights to all people. There have been some extremely authoritarian and oppressive leftists in the history of the world. Authoritarian and oppressive people are found on both the Left and the Right.

Matter of fact, if you go far enough either to the left or the right, authoritarian people are the ones you will find at those extremes.

Akenaton strikes me, after long acquaintance, as a non-authoritarian leftist atheist radical who is indeed in favor of freedom, equality, and civil rights for everyone. He is very opposed to capitalism and to organized religion.

He has reasons for opposing gay marriage, and he has articulated those reasons over and over again in the hundreds of posts on this thread. I'm not going to waste time trying to recap them all. What good would it do if it hasn't registered on you and Don yet? It would not register the next time either.

I agree with some of his reasons to some extent and I disagree with others, but I do understand his reasoning. If I were putting as much energy into trying to prove that his opinions are "bad" and therefore that HE is "bad"...if I were doing that, which is what you and Don are doing, then I doubt I'd have much attention or energy left to understand his reasoning...