My answer would be none. There is no fundamental, inalienable right to marry whomever or whatever one would. Marriage is a tradition that precedes and transcends civil law and exists to provide husband and wife protection, stability, and a solid foundation upon which they can bring children into the world and found a family and thus perpetuate and continually improve upon society as a whole. Traditional families are, were, and will always be the fundamental building blocks of society.
To make my case today, I will quote liberally from a very thoughtful book: Marriage and Same-Sex Unions: A Debate by Lynn Wardle and several other editors and contributors. I came across it in Google's book search and there is much of it that is readable on the web. I will put quotes from it in BLUE ARIAL FONT. It comes as highly recommended reading if you have a chance to look it up.
Here is an intro to the current situation pulled from the book (which was written with great foresight over five years ago)
"It should come as no surprise that these principles of international human rights have been misconstrued in and misapplied to ... the claim that same-sex relationships must be entitled to enjoy marital status and\, further, that such a claim is recognized and protected under international law, which emerged from the traditions established by the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights]... While such relationships may be based on the love of two people who happen to be of the same-sex, there are many other types of love between and among humans that do not constitute the grounds for declaring such relationships to be marriage. Examples include the love between a parent and his or her children, the love between siblings, and the love between friends or distant relatives. The reader might imagine many kinds of love and many kinds of commitment...some with people, some with animals, and some with inanimate objects. They may all be based on a person's love for the other... But such kinds of love do not a marriage make."
The point is well-stated, if slightly verbose. Love alone does not make marriage. There is a guy in my apartment complex that seems to fawn over his Mercedes to a degree that a marriage proposal seems imminent nearly every time he is outside covering it with its fitted cloth cover or removing imaginary specks of dust from the hood. I am sure that, whether you are for or against Prop 8, you would agree that a redefinition of marriage to include man and car would be ridiculous.
The fight in favor of same sex marriage is the latest move in a judicial game of chess which homosexual people have been playing against traditional society. From their perspective, it is fighting discrimination. From the standpoint of traditional marriage it is a gradual quest to force change upon our collective morals. The progression is to move from through three stages of public opinion regarding homosexuality: to endure it, to pity it, and finally to embrace it. Here is that thought fully developed from the aforementioned text.
"Advocates of same-sex marriage first asked for tolerance of themselves as homosexuals who were entitled to privacy. When this privacy was recognized and protected, they sought the pity of legal institutions for being discriminated against when they entered the public sphere. When the discrimination was declared unlawful and they were favored with the compassion of the courts and legislatures, they demanded endorsement by legal recognition of their sexual practices as being the same as those of traditional, married couples consisting of one man and one woman. But this attempt at affirmation and legal acceptance to be the the same as marriage is an absurdity, and the law of nations will have none of that - in the future or for the time being."
The progression from enduring, to pitying to embracing is a reference to Alexander Pope. Surely to some the use of this verse in this context will be considered inflammatory, but from my point of view it illustrates the perspective and the position of the Yes on 8 contingent: homosexuality is wrong.
"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yes seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
-Alexander Pope
My contention, as always, remains that homosexuality is wrong and that the attempt to foist it upon society and force its acceptance is unacceptable. I am very concerned about what sort of footnotes will be attached to the word "embrace" if Prop 8 fails.
-Concerned in California
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