Little Hawk, you seem determined to side-step the issue, miss the point, fail to respond to points that other people make, and come to unsupported conclusions. Be sure to let us know when you have something new to say.

Akenaton, no one is asking you to defend your leftist socialist credentials. Just to explain why you think, in the face of so much contrary evidence, that AIDS and homosexuality are inextricably linked. And even if they were, why that means that having homosexuals be part of the cultural mainstream is a bad thing. I know you think you've explained it over and over, but every explanation you've made has been refuted multiple times, and you haven't answered any of those objections. I can see that the whole thing seems blindingly obvious to you, but please keep in mind that the obviousness is lost on a whole bunch of very intelligent people. When I am confronted with that much well-reasoned opposition to my ideas, the first thing I do is check my logic, my facts, my assumptions, and my emotional state. You?

I know that we are having two different discussions, which are using two different sets of values and two different sets of basic assumptions.

You have never addressed the civil rights issue at all. In this life we often have to compromise between two mutually exclusive ideas. Even if you think that gay marriage is a very bad idea for whatever reasons you have, isn't the denial of civil rights an even worse idea? You obviously don't think so, and this is why you are seen as a bigot, where bigot is defined as someone who wants to deny normal rights to people based on their membership in a specific group. It's sort of like abortion -- no one thinks abortion is ever a good idea, but most of us have concluded that forcing a woman to bear a child against her will is an even worse idea, as is government interference in intensely personal decisions. We are asking you to conclude that the denial of civil rights is worse than the hypothetical danger of admitting homosexuals into normal society.