From a comment on Larvatus Prodeo.

My point is, it’s an institution that has constantly evolved and changed over all the years of our western civilisation. These days western girls have inheritance rights. Women don’t defer to their husband’s authority as they used to. Infertility does not invalidate the union. We believe love, and not property transfer or business partnership or political union, is the basis for marriage. In fact, we believe it’s the only basis for marriage. So marriage has shifted mightily. It’s an institution that can, and I’ll dare say will, accommodate the notion of gay marriage (or ‘civil union’), especially as property is now owned by individuals, rather than families (Packers and Murdochs excepted), and so the right of transfer is an individual choice.

Go read the rest of the thread. In amongs much nonsensical rambling from conservatives (seriously - just trying to parse some of their sentences gives me headaches. Every now and then I try to take it a step further and analyse their logic - fortunately, I have aspirin kept on hand for such folly), there are also other good comments that you should be reading as well.

[edit] I'm still reading more of this thread myself (thank you, LP, for your wonderful comments feed).

The contrast between the two sides of the argument really is startling. On the one hand, we have posters such as Naomi and Mark, links to samples of whose work I've already posted. On the other side, we have.. well, names (pseudonyms?) aren't neccessary.

Mark and Naomi in particular are fantastic: their points are logically consistent, well made, and on-topic. Those on the other side... well, one comment describes the idea of marriage being "between a man and a woman to the exclusion of others" as being:

the traditional institution as laid out in our Constitution

I'm astounded. I've not seen a better example of irony in almost a year.

[/edit]

PS. yes, I just put multiple sentences inside a set of parentheses, even but inserted taht set of parentheses into the middle of a sentence. Is that valid? I hope not - all grammar flames need at least one major error

PPS. I've long had a habit of posting pointers here to things worth reading elsewhere. Now that I've got ads on the site - and just possibly might make profit (Ha! I raff and raff and raff!) from traffic... well, I'm concerned that people might think I'm just trying to draw traffic. What do you think?

PPS. I posed that last question to myself and decided it's probably not a problem - I've been very clear that the material wasn't written by me, and I've encouraged you to go and read the source... also, I really do think it's worth reading.