The debate should not really have been about gay marriage.
It’s the classic liberal position of not having the government involved in marriage at all.
Why did the government get involved:
First it was stopping interracial marriage.
Then is was eugenics (blood test)
eu·gen·ics
noun
noun: eugenics
The science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.
The marriage license has a much darker history than the confederate flag. Do some research.
The government should not have the right to tell a bakery it has to bake a cake for a gay marriage. The government should not have the right to tell a minister he must marry two gay people. There are other bakeries and there are other churches or authorized people who will perform the marriage. The government should not have the power to force people to go against their beliefs. We have a first amendment that guarantees a citizens right to have his/her beliefs.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
The American colonies officially required marriages to be registered, but until the mid-19th century, state supreme courts routinely ruled that public cohabitation was sufficient evidence of a valid marriage. By the later part of that century, however, the United States began to nullify common-law marriages and exert more control over who was allowed to marry.
By the 1920s, 38 states prohibited whites from marrying blacks, “mulattos,” Japanese, Chinese, Indians, “Mongolians,” “Malays” or Filipinos.
FURTHER READING
The Ugly History of the Marriage License in America
Marriage Licenses Are A Racist Crime Against Humanity
AND FINALLY
The Case for Getting Government out of the Marriage Business
thanks for the link!