I support civil unions, but not full gay marriage (Due to a desire to maintain an institution that has been here since the beginning of creation (heterosexual marriage), concerns that it may eventually lead to legalization of polygamy, and to a lesser extent, concerns over whether kids are truly raised equally as well by gay couples as they would by straight couples with similar income and intelligence.).
But the fact is that this is relatively unimportant when compared with other issues, and the federal government and the courts have better things to do then try to either legalize it nationwide OR outlaw it nationwide, so the best solution is just to leave it up to the states. Liberal States should be able to allow it, Conservative States should be able to prohibit it, and it should be left up to the legislatures and voters within those states, not whatever activist judge happens to live nearby.
Marriage has not been in existence since 'creation'. Social bonding has been, of which homosexual bonds are included. Marriage was originally codified in tribal societies and had no 'legal' standing until the formation of the first civil laws.
Marriage was almost entirely about property. It was to ensure that property is managed and inherited because that was considered conducive to a civil society. Marriage up until very recently in the west was exclusively about property. Now luckily men and women today in most enlightened nations broadly speaking are equal in law. They are equal in law when they are born, when they are children and when they get married. If that marriage is dissolved then there is a fair hearing (one should hope) concerning that dissolution.
Patriarchy came before marriage. Women's subordination to men at all stages in her life; from her fathers dominion over her as a child and as an asset to be traded, adult males sexual dominion over her in adulthood and so on was the catalyst for establishing marriage as a contractual binding societal agreement. That is why there is marriage. Religions and customs born in cultures of exclusive patriarchy informed those cultural and religious laws that defined marriage. That is why justification in the Christian West for 'erunt animae duae in carne una'; the very words spoken in the marriage vow was intertwined in the set definition of women being subordinate in deed, mind and body to menfolk. In marriage, canonical law (which was interchangeable as 'state' law until secularisation) inferred that the very being or legal existence of the woman was suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of her husband. That meant a man could beat his wife and it was not recognised as assault. He could rape her and it was not recognised as rape because her rights were suspended.
Women, broadly speaking, since antiquity have ben charged with being 'defective.' The Greeks said it, it's found in Colossians, Peter, Ephesians, Corinthians and Timothy and the philosophies of Aquinas and Luther. While the definition of why people get married has changed and we rightly cringe at the 'property' aspect of marriage, we are now aware of the broad spectrum of human sexuality. However this time it's the people who have same sex attraction and form couples who are considered to be 'defective.' That is an extension of the same patriarchal hetero-orthodox positioning that has always been welded by those with political and religious power. Marriage after all was their institution to begin with. That's why they have allowed themselves at various stages in history to regulate it, usually in their own favour (divorce law for example) It's escaping them now of course, because it's increasingly seen as an act of personal commitment.
