I get to change my mind if I like. So I'll post again.

John P, you say:

I've always seen my marriage contract as an agreement between my government and my family. Not as an agreement between me and my wife. Whatever we agree on between ourselves is for us decide. Where we need legal protection is at tax time, or in case one of us dies, or becomes very sick, or makes a million dollars, or whatever. The marraige contract defines us as a legal unit. The fact that same-sex couples are denied these protections is a terrible act of bigotry on the part of my government. Gay rights is the last remaining civil rights issue that doesn't have laws requiring equal treatment.

I agree with every word of this. If the government is going to take an interest at all in marriage, and it must due to questions of inheritance and joint property, etc., (taxation needn't be based on marital status, but if it is, that's another reason), then it must have a government-sanctioned or at least government-recognized official status of "married" which can be referenced in such cases (inheritance, etc.). But to not allow marriage between any two (or more!) people regardless of gender, the government must show some sort of public harm with recognizing gay marriage (or polygamy), which I don't think can be done without referring to religion, which has no business whatsoever being dragged into the question in a secular, multicultural state like the USA.

In other words, when we're talking about marriage, there are two questions. Churches (or other religious organizations) can recognize or not recognize marriages based on their traditions and such, and the government can recognize or not recognize marriages based on its rules. There are really TWO marriages for a religious couple, that of their church/synagogue/etc., and that of the government. One could conceivably be married according to the govermment but not according to any given church, or could be married according to a church but not according to the govermment. There is no reason to draw any link whatever between the two institutions beyond the fact that they share the same name -- indeed in a secular, multicultural state like the USA, they SHOULD and MUST be kept apart. That they are not is a failure of our system, and a blurring of the line between church and state which I decry.

I don't think this makes me a bigot.

On the other hand, I belong to a religion which believes sexual acts between unmarried (in the religious sense) persons to be a sin, and which recognizes marriage (in the religious sense) as being allowable only between one man and one woman.

Perhaps this makes me a bigot. According to the online Webster's, a bigot is someone who is "obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices."

Perhaps belong to such a church de facto makes me a bigot. Perhaps according to this definition, anyone who belongs to a church which has long-standing and hard-to-change positions on any topic is a bigot. In which case I question the usefulness of the word. I don't know. I do know it's really easy to sling names around, and it hardly ever helps the discussion along.

Alex