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The gay marriage issue is an odd duck, because marriage is a civil institution with civil implications (custody, taxation, divorce, inheritance, etc.) that also has religious implications and traditions wound into it.
For one thing, it's not as if one needs to be religious at all in order to get married, to belong to any particular religious faith, or to have a member of some clergy perform the act. A Justice of the Peace, a captain at sea, or some guy in an Elvis suit in Reno all qualify to certify the deed, if the relevant paperwork is in order. About the only governmental restrictions on marriage are that (a) you can't be married to someone else already, (b) you are old enough, sane enough and sufficiently unimpaired by drink to provide legal consent, and (c) the government gets its license fee and all the papers are filled out.
Therefore, it's the _governmental_ function of marriage (the "civil union," so to speak) that should be the important and relevant part. Whether the Catholics recognize Jewish marriages, the Methodists recognize Buddhist marriages or any church recognizes atheist marriages should be secondary to whether the _state_ recognizes them as being valid. I am an atheist, myself -- if Church X disapproves of my marriage, why should I give a rat's ass? They're not my church, they're not my problem.
So why should a union of two people be restricted to particular gender combinations, once the religious implications are removed from the debate? The answer is obvious -- there is no good reason why it should. Let the legal definition be inclusive, and let the churches decide for themselves who they'll marry and who they won't. If the Catholics or the Baptists declare homosexual marriage to be blasphemy, fine -- they don't have to perform them themselves. The homosexual couple can then go shopping for a church that better fits their beliefs and lifestyles, or just go to the Justice of the Peace and avoid that contention entirely, and if the Baptist He-Man Homo-Haters Club has a problem with that, that's _their_ problem.
Yet our Senate Majority Leader not only believes that the decision of who can and cannot be state-recognized belongs in the churches' hands instead of the state's, but that the very notion of non-church-approved unions is so catastrophic that the Constitution needs to be amended to prevent it. Again -- WHY? I keep hearing the "destroying the integrity of marriage" argument from religious and conservative pundits, and I just... don't... get it. Why does what someone _else's_ church (or lack thereof) believe about marriage inherently threaten what _you_ and _your church_ believe about it?
Not to mention that the vast majority of Constitutional amendments _defend_ and _enumerate_ rights, not restrict them. About the only similar "no laws shall be passed allowing this" amendments that come to mind are the thirteenth (abolishing slavery, which was a no-brainer) and Prohibition... and we saw how well _that_ went.
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