Why are "small government" conservatives so obsessed with the gays?

[Alcon]

Marriage is a government benefit meant to incentivize and/or endorse something we consider socially desirable.  

Social conservatives do not see gay marriage as a social good, because they see it as immoral behavior and/or causing undesirable outcomes.

Because of that, they see gay marriage as an imposition because it uses shared government resources/institutions to incentivize/endorse something they think is wrong or undesirable.  They see that as expanding government (and...they're not wrong in the technical sense) for an objectionable reason, so they're against it.

I'm not endorsing this view.  I vehemently disagree with it, in fact.  But it's not that hard to understand.

[Alcon]

I can give the small government answer to this. The concept is that the family should be able to look after itself and it's own members and not the state. Homosexual 'marriage' doesn't do anything that Families in general do - it's not self sustaining, you don't have a second generation - so you end up with two older people without younger folks willing to help in. Who do they turn to? The state.

And that doesn't even get into all the assorted health issues - the fact that 80 percent of gonorrhea cases are 2 percent of the population. It makes even less sense to clamp down on smoking but support homosexuality.

your argument is that gay marriage encourages gays who would otherwise marry to cohabitate with other gays, and that gay cohabitation has a higher net cost to social services than closeted gay people having children?  wow okay then

Also, I'm pretty sure your gonorrhea statistic is completely wrong.  Did you read the Conservapedia article and mistakenly think that a 3.7x higher rate among gay men means 3.7x as many cases among gay men as straights (~80%)?  Because, no, math that again.

[Alcon]

Marriage is a government benefit meant to incentivize and/or endorse something we consider socially desirable.  

Social conservatives do not see gay marriage as a social good, because they see it as immoral behavior and/or causing undesirable outcomes.

Because of that, they see gay marriage as an imposition because it uses shared government resources/institutions to incentivize/endorse something they think is wrong or undesirable.  They see that as expanding government (and...they're not wrong in the technical sense) for an objectionable reason, so they're against it.

I'm not endorsing this view.  I vehemently disagree with it, in fact.  But it's not that hard to understand.

But using that logic, anything that the majority feels is "wrong" or "undesirable" (when no actual, demonstrable harm is done) is subject to separate government treatment. It's the same logic that allowed illegal interracial marriage, segregation, "separate but equal", Jim Crow, etc. So yes, it is hard for me to understand how a person would endorse that kind of position when historically it has always ended up making the supporters look like foolish bigots.

Again, these are the same people who talk about gun control using the language "Don't like it? Don't get a gun." And yet when they don't like something, banning it is perfectly reasonable?

I mean, two things.  First, you're presuming that "no actual, demonstrable harm is done," which most social conservatives would contest.  Second, you seem to be arguing an equal protection argument.  I totally agree the equal protection argument is strong here, because I don't think there is demonstrable harm, but there are plenty of places where disparate treatment is given for policy reasons.  We prohibit marriage between family members for policy reasons.  Affirmative action is obviously very literally disparate treatment for some policy goal.  Maybe you disagree with those for internal consistency, but I don't think you'd argue either of those have "historically made supporters look like foolish bigots."

As far as your gun thing, there is a distinction between banning something and not expanding government recognition.  I don't think it's a compelling distinction in this case, but hey, I doubt conservatives see meaning in the distinctions drawn to make affirmative action OK for someone who otherwise embraces equal protection.

[Alcon]

No, my argument is that gonorrhea is 80 percent homosexual men. That's a health crisis. That you are arguing against my point indicates your lack of familiarity with the point.

If your only argument was about gonorrhea, what was this paragraph about?  Or are you just giving an argument you reject on behalf of small-government people (that's fine)?

I can give the small government answer to this. The concept is that the family should be able to look after itself and it's own members and not the state. Homosexual 'marriage' doesn't do anything that Families in general do - it's not self sustaining, you don't have a second generation - so you end up with two older people without younger folks willing to help in. Who do they turn to? The state.

The median site-specific gonorrhea prevalence was 16.9% (range by site: 10.4%–28.1%).

Over the entire population, the rate is about 100 per 100k, meaning that about 1 in 1000 have gonorrhea.

Since the prevalence, according to CDC is now 17 percent on average, that means that the risk is about 170x. And you wonder why small government advocates see an issue?

17 percent of two percent of the population gives us 34 percent. If were' looking at 4 percent, that gets doubled to 68 percent. If it's 5 percent, then you get my 85 percent number.

You're making a glaring error.  Several, actually (one is that you're comparing gay men to a population that includes women, for some inexplicable reason.)

More importantly, you're comparing an estimate of the entire population for heterosexuals, to the proportion of men-who-have-sex-with-men who seek STD testing.  Obviously, those who seek STD testing are going to be more likely to have STDs.  Fortunately, since you were ridiculously squirrely about statistics the last two times we argued, gonorrhea is a "notifiable" disease for CDC purposes and we have exact tracking statistics.  Scroll down to page 24 of this report.  Only in San Francisco does the % of cases among gay men approach 85%.  In every other jurisdiction listed, it's well under 50%.  As you can tell from the next page, the rate among MSM is more like 3-4x the MSW population, not 170x.  Considering that the number of MSW is way more than 3-4x the MSM population, it's obvious that MSW are the easy majority of gonorrhea cases and your 85% number is nonsense.

We can argue about whether discouraging homosexuality is going to help those numbers, and whether it's worth whatever countervailing costs there might be.  But you're totally, completely wrong on the numbers.