Gay Marriage, again

As we are now four days from gay marriage being legal, I just thought I'd re-iterate my main points:

- I'm not bothered at all by it.

- My own 12+ year marriage isn't any less valid because of it.

- Gay marriage is still two people getting married - they just happen to be of the same gender. It does not lead us down a slippery slope to legitimizing polygamy or bestiality for marriage purposes. If society doecides those are appropriate too, then that's society's separate call - though I really don't care about the former one way or another and I'm very much against the latter (it's really yucky, I think).

- I do think that when gay marriage is legal, companies should cease offering "domestic partner" benefits. If you want to live as a couple and obtain joint benefits, get married. Couples who currently enjoy domestic partner benefits should be allowed a transition phase to either get married or revert to single benefits.

- I really don't think there's any religious basis for determining what marriage is or isn't (I'm still working on my last essay). I believe religious marriage and civil marriage are two separate things, and if a religious institution doesn't want to marry a same-sex couple, that's their prerogative. Separation of church and state means just that. But I think there's no reason any two people who want to live as a married couple should be denied civil marriage. The only reason I was married by a minister was because he was the father of a friend of ours (my wafe and I come from different religious backgrounds, and the minister who married us was from a third religion). If not for that, we just as readily might have been married by a Justice of the Peace. It wouldn't have made a difference to me - the marriage would have been equally valid.

- Opponents of gay marriage would be far better served trying to fix other societal "problems". We've got plenty of more important stuff to deal with.