all marriages do involve property. Even if the parties in a marriage do not own property at the time of marriage any property (real or personal)obtained by one or both of the parties would be impacted by marriage. By the very fact that they are married a couple would be required to draft an agreement to superceed the marriage.

Pre-marriage the only way to avoid the effects of marriage is to a draft a prenuptual nullifying the state property requirements given in marriage by law.

Furthermore, if property is your concern, all of that can be settled by a civil union and the marriage title can be kept for those who can produce children.

It seems pretty clear that I am making the argument that marriage has always been regulated by the state since it is a transaction involving property, a business transaction and like many contracts involving property it is helpful that the state certify the validity of the transaction like a deed for real estate. This is clearly objective however your definition of a valid family is the subjective definition. Why isn’t the extended family a valid family unit. Asian cultures for centuries have defined the extended family as the ideal family unit.

Denying a gay couple the right to marry is like denying a black person the right to own property or another minority group the right to form a corporation.

As far as your difference between interracial couples and gay couples being the ability to procreate, I thought my posts above make it pretty clear that marriage laws have little to do with children and everything to do with spouses.

As far as interracial marriages go, I’ve answered that already. Based on my requirements above - nuclear family and all of that - there is no difference between interracial and other marriages, they can still constitute the nuclear family. The reasons to be against interracial marriages has to do with objections against race, not objections against marriage, meaning that if you think it wrong to have members of different races have sexual intercourse or to have children of mixed race than you would tend to be against interracial marriages - knowing, again, that marriages tend to produce children . But that is in the racial arena not the marriage arena. In other words, that starts from premises that deal with race and have nothing to do with marriage itself. Opponents of gay marriage, not having racist premises, are perfectly fine with interracial marriages.

In addition, there is a scientific difference between interracial marriages and homosexual marriages. The most obvious being that interracial marriages, so long as they involve a male and a female, are by their very nature able to produce children, to form the nuclear family. Homosexuals unions, no matter what they do to themselves are by nature, in a way that heterosexual unions can never be, prohibited from forming such families.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that homosexuality is not a choice, it is a genetic component in your physiology. The others are behaviors a desire to marry multiple women or to marry your sister has no genetic correlation it is a chosen behavior.

Given that homosexuality is an inherited characteristic a more relevant question is why not ban interracial marriage mariage if you continue to ban gay marriage?

Gay marriage advocates, and polygamist advocates, are asking for much more than the right to be with who they love, they are asking the government itself, and because we are a democracy - the citizens, to recognize and endorse their union - far more than freedom would entail. In other words, it is those who argue for gay marriage and polygamy that want to increase the role of government, that want to have the government perform functions far and above its function (to certify love).

Granted, my definition and objective criteria for marriage is shaky. It doesn’t answer all of the questions and satisfy all of the scenarios - marriage has changed and been weakened so much already for it to. But it is a something and compared to the alternative - compared to having marriage mean nothing more than what politically correct dictums suggest - it is, IMHO, far superior. Again, I ask that if marriage has nothing to do with children, then why stop at gay marriage? Why not also include polygamy? Why not also include Polyandry? What about sibling marriages? You have to draw the line somewhere, the only difference between opponents and proponents of gay marriage are where that line is drawn - opponents stop at the nuclear family.