It is battles that give clear definitions to political movements and the members of those movements. Not all Sunnis were radical or anti-American, yet their course was chosen by their tribal leaders when they boycotted the American sponsored Iraqi elections in 2005. It is unavoidable.

So far, there have been individuals that have fought fake liberal agendas concerning gays, but no real battles to distinguish the sides. No real bloodshed. Partially cause the quiet gays want solutions while the more vocal gays want power and control. Between such a contest, it is the loud ones that get the attention and the ones that get to decide the destiny of their group-identity.

The more vocal gays can always character assassinate any dissidents, like Corporal Matt Sanchez. You see, theirs is the movement while their opponents are simply “individual cranks” that can be eliminated. This is a disadvantageous tactical situation for those gays that seek real solutions.

Marriage was not a solution crafted for human rights or legal equality. That is a result of political reforms or greater societal standards. As such, if you seek legal equality, then it is the law you must seek it from. Marriage will provide a solution only intended for what it was used for in the past.

And as much as you tout the benefits of the institution of marriage, those benefits were only accrued through tradition, hard work, and multiple levels of build up. In order to derive those benefits for your relationship, you would have to modify marriage. But the very thing that makes marriage so all pervasive as an institution of societal standards and legal applications, will also make it extraordinarily hard to change. If you want more immediate results, you would do better to create a new law encompassing and integrating other laws to create a unique effect. That isn’t based upon marriage or the laws of marriage, but upon the US Constitution, for example.

Gays were convinced that marriage was the solution to their woes by two primary aspects.

1. Manufactured Crisis. It was not enough to simply highlight gay relationship difficulties or obstacles. No, the Leftist agents had to stoke up a crisis which they then would present themselves, and marriage, as the solution. Thus we saw in 2004 and various incidents before then. They could not acquire the grassroots support or the funding/media attention without such tactics. For they had no interest in solving problems, only in getting power by making them worse.

2. Group identity politics, aka slavery though creating a victim class. There are many classes. The rich, the poor, the slave, are 3 amongst em. In Rome, there were the equitus class, the Senate class, and various minor titles of nobility in between. By slotting you into a class, by slotting gays into a victim class, the Left has successfully rendered them into the Left’s own perpetual Palestinian refuge camp. An endless source of political capital and justifications. In order to sustain this class, they must sustain the condition of victimization, else that class would get out of the hole and that would be intolerable. Thus the Left’s methods must necessarily keep their focus on making the problem worse and feeding grievances. By linking the identity of gays with the politics and political activism of the Left, they ensure that the public can no longer separate the political agenda from the actual individuals being affected. Once that has been accomplished, you are then able to say that resistance to the GLBT agenda is discrimination and hatred of gays, rather than a refusal to accede to extortionist and exploitive strategies of power. Of course, the other side of the equation is that whatever policies the Left promotes for gays will necessarily be seen as coming from the gay community, even though that is not necessarily true. By linking politics with people’s personal identities, you create group identity politics. It allows for better offensive support, as it allows you to attack opponents on the justification that they are attacking your own people. And it allows for better defensive support of the political policies, as it provides every activist with a purely egotist and selfish oriented motivation. For example, if the political platform is part of their group’s identity, then protecting that platform is the same as protecting one’s own identity.

If you take Iraq as an example, not even the United States military could do anything for the Sunnis (which we may use as an analogical construct for gays) until those Sunnis rejected their partisan and religious fanatics, the foreign AQ members. The US military tried with Fallujah, but it was only ever temporary stability until the Al Anbar Awakening.

Gays have been given the benefit of an equal protection under law equal to no other nation, here in the US. It is either theirs to use or their master’s to abuse. One or the other.

Choose your destiny. As the Sunnis chose theirs, be a lapdog of AL Qaeda or an ally in human progress with America.

And Ronald, with his monogamous union lasting decades, and the concern over financial issues, is one of those who can most be hurt by the lack of gay marriage.

I’ve several times indicated my opposition to gay marriage, though I am gay. I’ve phrased it as: “I’m against gay marriage, though for me, the issue is actually one of six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other. It’s not that important to me.”

The main problem is that most gay people are hostile towards marriage itself: its purposes, its existence for thousands of years as a civilized institution. They don’t want marriage for the purpose of belonging; they want it as a trophy in the culture wars. (I believe the excellent article by Winecoff makes that point, and I’m stealing it.) This is not true of Ronald, but it is true of the vast majority who are exercising the leftist “gay agenda”. This is a huge problem.

Take a camera to a group of activists promoting gay marriage and start talking, in sarcastic withering tones, about “breeders”. You’ll get PLENTY of agreement. All a part of the big problem. Yet for straight people, the main purpose of marriage is to raise children.

The other huge problem lies in tactics and strategy. The correct way to win a battle such as this is to convince the people. That takes decades. The gay marriage movement has chosen to rely on judicial activism: Relying on judge decisions and ramming this, absolutely smashing this, down peoples’ throats. (And yes I get the negative imagery of that.) The disastrousness of choosing this leftist route is so important it is almost beyond words.

I would have said there were only two states out of 50 where the people were sympathetic enough to support gay marriage: California and Massachusetts. Now I take California off the list, and I’m not too sure about Massachusetts either. So you may be at ZERO of fifty states where the effort to win peoples’ minds and hearts has been successful. What a terrible, disastrous mistake, to take the activist judge route. I am utterly, completely opposed to that route.

Finally, you are modifying one of the most critical social institutions, one which has existed for thousands of years, that supports the very idea of civilization itself. Such a change might or might not be worth it, but if worth it, it clearly is not a battle that is to be won easily.

When the vast majority of proponents of gay marriage actually want to tear down the institution of marriage itself, you’ve got a problem in that movement that lacks a solution. That leaves people like Ronald and his loved partner in a terrible situation.

There is no consistent definition of domestic partnership, and the rights of such a partnership don’t transfer to other states.

I’m in another state now on vacation…if I walk outside and get hit and end up in a hospital, whatever rights I have in California are out the window and meaningless.

There are even weird things like…you get a domestic partnership, then one partner splits to another state and you want to sever the relationship and…then what? Marriage has a massive amount of established law that handles all this. We can spend years and lots of resources recreating all that, or we can just acknowledge that two consenting adults should be allowed to marry and even that most people probably want them to have all those protections (even when they don’t want to call it “Marriage”).

This is why it bothers me when even other gays at GayPatriot or Big Hollywood (sites I follow fanatically and quite enjoy) pull out the “Marriage gains a gay person nothing” trope — it’s just not true. Not even close to true.

Perhaps it would be the best tactic. I don’t know.

Personally, when there’s already an established mechanism for exactly what people like me need, I think it’s easiest just to apply the “separate is not equal” concept and flip the switch.

Somehow I suspect a whole new legal mechanism will take decades to settle out, as opposed to simply applying the mechanism we have to all adults, especially when the end result would presumably be exactly the same.

I’m not qualified to say what is the best approach. But I hope you’ll understand my frustration at being thrown under the bus because all people can talk about are extremists I have nothing to do with and don’t care about in the slightest.

I strongly believe that moderate and conservative gays are on the rise and that there are already far more of us than anyone knows, and I see evidence of that all over on the web (GayPatriot being a great example, as well as multiple posters on Big Hollywood). It would be nice to have a single conversation about gay issues that didn’t devolve into people linking to Folsom Street Fair as if that somehow settled the issue and fairly represented an entire community. It’s worse when it’s not just a matter of internet debate, but on a human rights issue that directly impacts me and others like me, those who conservatives should be courting instead of losing in the crowd.

Please don’t take any of this as direct criticism — I’m just venting a bit at an association and a situation that is driving me nuts. Just imagine on any item of importance to you — religion, gender, profession, whatever (and some don’t have to imagine, for sure) — that everyone could only seem to associate you with the worst extreme minority of people in your community and that’s all they talked about. It’s galling.

We do, but that is only the tip of the iceberg (you need another one for health decisions, and other things to deal with property rights and inheritance, etc). To be truly safe you have to engage in a whole series of legal items, at a non-insignificant cost, and even then you can’t guarantee that in the heat of the moment they will be honored or that they apply in all states equally.

Plus, it’s possible for a family to go to court and puncture those…even if they don’t succeed, it’s a nasty and time-consuming legal battle. Meanwhile, marriage simply takes care of all that.

As Penn Jillette said in discussing Proposition 8, he doesn’t believe in marriage himself yet he is married, because after consultation with lawyers it was the only guaranteed way he could protect their rights over their children.

You’ve raised a very good issue, but I think you’re also making my point for me. Wouldn’t it make sense right now for the GLBT community to focus on a nationwide system of laws that recognizes civil unions from other states? I think the vast majority of Americans would support that. Instead, though, the GLBT community is jettisoning a very practical issue about individuals living their lives, and instead expending all of its capital on an explosive issue that involves changing the definition of an institution that’s been around since recorded history. This latter is an angry, uphill battle, that is much less likely in the short term to achieve legitimate, realistic and humane goals.