bcb1 ,

You’re right that society changes, and for some reason, I suspect you DO like what you see. Yet as for the inevitability claims, there is no reason for either side to celebrate or despair without reserve. As I said, why don’t you wait until your side wins some actual elections before you declare the debate “over”? And actually wins some elections outside the far-left states. If any side has a right to declare the debate “over,” it’s those of us who favor traditional marriage.

But it’s not over, of course. Liberals will continue to make efforts, some of them successful, to do an end-run around the democratic process and redefine marriage by judicial decree.

And polls have moved, as I noted, tho most of the movement came between 1996 and 2002 or so. But more telling are the referendum results. It will be interesting to see the results of the probable referenda in Maine and California.

I hope you will concede that opposition to homosexual or other novel ideas of “marriage” is far deeper than the alleged adversion to rock and roll. Indeed, what evidence do you have to show that MOST “evangelical” and “pentacostal” churches or their pastors truly believed that rock was the devil’s music? How many successful anti-rock-and-roll statewide referenda were there in the 1950s?

Sure the under thirty crowd supports gay marriage today. But as they age, they will increasing marry themselves and have children. Nothing will identify the threat of homosexual marriage to families like having kids of your own.

In many states, the people, not activist legislatures, have voted to protect the rights of families to traditional marriage. In not one, have they voted to change the drfinition of marrriage that has existed for eons.

The “state” may not have existed in your sense of the word. But marriage–a civil status with privileges and duties–was emphatically a civil, legal institution in the west, and the fight over who would control it–ecclesiastical or purely civil figures–was a major fight in Europe well before the 20th century, with the church generally losing control.

Marriage was both a natual and supernatural institution. From an 1840 legal treatise on marriage.

“Definition of Marriage.]—Marriage is considered in every country as a contract, and may be defined to be a contract-according to the form prescribed by the law by which a man and woman, capable of entering into such a contract, mutually engage with each other to live their whole lives together in the state of union which ought to exist between a husband and his wife. The civil law defines marriage to be ” Conjanctio maris et feminae consortium omnis vitae divini et Immuni juris communicatio”

In western Christianinity, the ministers of matrimony are the baptized persons themselves, and not the priest, minister, etc.

At (Roman Catholic) canon law, the civil effects of marriage are recognized as to be determined by civil, not Church law (e.g., effects on property, etc.). And the Church has traditionally REQUIRED its members to qualify and effectuate a civil marriage as a condition for a licit marriage in the Church.

Tons of authority from the legal tradition in the Christian west indicates that believing Christians considered a civil institution of marriage as necessary and proper to Christian marriage.

Necessary condition is not a sufficient condition. Christians believed in both civil and religious marriage, with the religious ceremony having civil consequences–consequences that the Church(es?) supported. I come at this from the Catholic position (the majority of Christians), but even after the Reformation, both the Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican traditions ALL supported civil marriage as an appropriate support/compliment to holy matrimony, whether defined as a sacrament or not.

It just seems to me like the state is just butting into an area it really has no business involving itself. For myself, who sees the only legitimate role of a government to protect persons and property from violent aggression by others, I don’t see how you justify the state’s involvement in the whole matter.

As Thomas Paine put it, “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them…” This whole state-run marriage business is nothing more than an area of civil society being taken over by a bunch of thugs who presume to define our culture for us.