If marriage is not an immutable characteristic, the state is free to discriminate, as they do in other forms of contractual obligation between parties. Whether he knows it or not, he's searching for an immutable characteristic upon which the government has infringed. In Loving v. Virginia, the state had clearly infringed upon man-woman relationships by exploiting race.
The ongoing gay marriage battle is based upon the idea that it has nothing to do with man-woman relations. It's obviously true. We have a bunch of different options. Expand the sickness by building gay marriage contract law and legal precedent. Expand the sickness by subjecting homosexuals to heterosexual relationship and contract law. Undermine the system of discrimination we have created, by repealing the foolhardy socioeconomic policy that brought about its existence.
We should? a) Spread the disease b) Treat the symptoms c) Eradicate the disease. Apparently, this is a trick question for most Americans, which is why our species continues to suffer needlessly.
In Loving v. Virginia the court held that state discrimination on the basis of race in the realm of marriage laws constituted an equal protection violation. The argument for gay marriage is that state discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is also unconstitutional because sexual orientation, like race, is an immutable characteristic that should be subject to some form of heightened scrutiny.
There are pros and cons to getting married. The state and federal governments confer many benefits on married couples, but also probably some costs such as the so-called "marriage tax." Whether the current regime of tax and welfare regulations related to marriage is sensible is unrelated to the gay marriage question. No one is going to go down the rabbit hole of debating the pros and cons of our federal income tax system in this thread, because this thread is about same-sex marriage.
You're conflating two different questions:
1. Should the government recognize unions between two individuals and use that status as the basis for qualification for various government benefits?
2.
If the government
does grant such recognition, is it constitutional to grant recognition to heterosexual couples but not homosexual couples.
I get that you think the regime of civil marriage should be abolished entirely. But do you really not see that someone's answer to question 1 could be "no, all marriage laws should be repealed" while their answer to question 2 could be "no, because discrimination on the basis of such immutable characteristics is bad?"
I take you to mean that the "sickness/ disease" is the social inequality created by what you view as the oppressive institution of marriage. Your argument against gay marriage is then that expanding marriage to gay people will cause more people to suffer under the oppressive institution of marriage. The problem with that argument of course is that you could replace "gay people" with "black people" and the result would be the same. By your reasoning, if minorities were prohibited from getting married, it would be a net positive for society because fewer people would suffer under the oppressive institution of marriage.
