[T]he lesbian lifestyle [is] apparently characterized, [...] by staying up late club hopping, partying too hard and drinking too much.

Yes, that's a pretty fair characterization of both gay and lesbian lifestyles.
For whatever societal reasons, bars are the focus of most gay socializing.

Michael: Most lesbians do seem to move past it, graduating to heterosexual relationships, stable and somewhat boring homosexual relationships or loneliness.

Right! It's like a judo move. Quit pushing against gay marriage, and watch the left fall flat on its face pushing for it...

Then I got pregnant and had a baby.

How does that happen to a lesbian? Surely it didn't happen by accident in the back seat of a Lada? Or is it something caught on by touching a toilet seat or doorknob?

She wasn't living a "lesbian lifestyle". She was living the life of the irresponsible, self-centered permanent adolescent.

Given that the societal reason for marriage is bearing and raising children, and given that for a society (state) to last more than one generation it must gain new members as the old ones die, just how could the state possibly get out of the marriage business?

David:

Yes, that's what I've read, that long-term lesbian couples "merge" their self-identities even more than long-term hetero- couples, possibly due to a double dose of feminine socializing skills, and live...
Well, "boring" might be a bit much, but definitely staid lives.

Michael: There's a reason they coined the phrase, "Lesbian Bed Death", or so I'm told.

Ray: Civil marriage (i.e., you have to go to the state to get permission to marry) is a relatively recent phenomenom, dating back to the Victorians. In fact, it's positively modern and conservatives should be against it on that ground, alone.

Steven den Beste at USS Clueless posted on this subject a few days ago.

As usual, whether you agree with him or not (I did, and changed my viewpoint somewhat thereby), he writes with astonishing clarity.

I would be all for gay marriage if the government would also pass and enforce strict adultery laws. Since far too many gays are not monogamous, their fear of being punished just might dissuade most of them from ever getting married.

Orrin, getting the state out of marriage in order stop gay marriage makes as much sense as distributing condoms in schools to reduce teenage sex or legalizing drugs to reduce drug use. Huh?

Vince: "Marriage" is a word. We couldn't stop people from using it even before the SJC acted. (By the way, this posting is mine, not OJ's.)

"Marriage" is a word. We can't stop a nesting pair of sodomites from using it, but we can laugh our heads off when they do.

Well, for now, anyway. I'm sure the MA SJC will ban that, too, probably in the same opinion they use to force the rest of us to run your sordid little experiment along with you.

>>I'm coming more and more to think that we should just get the state out of the civil marriage business

I absolutely agree. "Marriage" should be a construct of church and community. If two gay people "marry" within their community, great, they are considered married in the eyes of those most important to them. Other people can consider them married or not, with no ramifications. There's no discrimination by the government, everybody's happy.

Contracts are enforced by the state. Couples ("married" within their community or not) could enter contracts that would reflect substantial portions of current marriage law including community property, etc. and also taking into account contract termination (divorce).

No reason why marriage and contracts need to overlap and both be under control of the state.

David, if marriage is simply a word, then why are gays pushing so hard for the legalization of same-sex marriage? It sounds like a lot of hard work for nothing or is it really for nothing?

Bret and David,

The "get government out of marriage" argument has always struck me as deeply impractical, though of course there's nothing so radical, ill-advised and impracticable that some judge somewhere won't foist it on us. A couple of problems, some practical and some arguably less so:

1. People who aren't lawyers aren't going to be very good at writing good "marriage" contracts, and most probably won't think about it. People in love do stupid things and young people in love don't understand marriage nearly as well as people who have been married for 50 years, on average. Far be it from me to undermine the cartel, but normal people shouldn't need to hire two lawyers in order to get married.

2. Divorce. (a) It ought to be discouraged for all we're worth, and letting people decide what marriage means to them individually undermines that goal severely. (b) Lovers splitting up aren't noted for their disinterested rationality. Somebody's going to need to divide up the assets, assign custody of the kids, etc. If not the state on the basis of generally applicable laws, then who and on what basis?

3. Administrative costs. My lawyer says the deal was that I could patronize bawdy-houses, my soon-to-be-ex-wife's lawyer says the deal was I couldn't, so who decides? My selective memory of details supporting my position is always strongest when I'm trying to justify the unjustifiable. Is the decision based on the parties' intent (usual contract rule)? The standards of the "community" that "married" the parties? Something else?

4. If the community gets a say in what the deal is, what happens when people change their religious or community affiliations? I've been a Baptist, a Presbyterian and an Episcopalian in the last ten years (largely because I've lived in three different cities and don't have strong views on ecclesiastical polity). Whether a conversion is sincere or strategic, it will be a problem (two lesbians adopt a child, then one of them moves out and becomes a fundamentalist Christian -- who gets custody, what does she get to say about her ex-lover, etc.).

5. The idea that other people can "consider" me married or not as they see fit won't work given the vast complex of anti-discrimination law, tax law, etc. Sure, we could abolish that, but it ain't gonna happen any time soon. And the gay rights lobby won't stand for it anyway. Like Ann Coulter said about the drug war -- we can legalize crack just as soon as I don't have to pay to maintain crackheads on welfare.

6. Call me old-fashioned, but the cultural norms surrounding marriage are meant to protect people from having their vulnerabilities exploited by their spouses. Weaken or abolish the cultural norms, get more exploitative behavior, especially against women and children. See also, the 1960s to the present.

It's a custody fight over the term, with "church" and "state" basically being the two plaintiffs involved. While you can find some denominations that are perfectly comfortable with gay marraige, and you can find a lot of states and nations that will never be comfortable with it, the fight basically comes down to whether or not marriage will be primarily a religious or civil instatution in the future.

As it is now (and has been for about a millenium or so), there is no church-state seperation in the realm of the wed (ministers and justices of the peace have equal standing to perform services). But that's a situation that appears to be fast coming to an end.

Government action forcing most religious faiths and denominations in the U.S. to accept a new definiion of marriage no doubt would be well received in certain parts of the country, but as others have said, it could open up other cans of worms in the future, such as challenging the unified effort of most churches and the government to ban polygamy in the 19th century. Marriage as a state term means only what the government of the moment says it means -- man/woman, man/man, woman/woman, man/woman/woman/woman/woman, man/pre-teen, whatever. Marriage as a religious term has a slightly higher and more permanent authority.

Bret, what you are proposing is legalizing gay marriage without actually admitting that your proposal would lead to legalized gay marriage. Nice try. It is sort of like pro-abortionts, claiming that they only support a woman's right to an abortion but not the actual abortion even though what would happen either way is the murder of innocent life.

I keep meaning to reply, and I keep getting thrown by Bret's rebuttal of Bret's argument.

Anyway...

Getting rid of civil marriage won't force the courts to take on any new roles. At the moment, we have parents who weren't married, or aren't married or have never met. We have people buying real estate together or making investments without thinking through what will happen when they part. We now have gay marriage, so it's a little late to start thinking about how to avoid it.

As we already have to deal with all these problems, what do we gain from having civil marriage? Not, apparently, the ability to conserve social norms or stability. Not the right to shape the type of society the majority wish to pass on to our children. Not the addition of monetary benefit to help entice men into civilization. Instead, we have some fairly meaningless intrusion taking the form of a series of hoops to jump through tied to enforced social approval of arrangements of which we don't approve.

Most importantly, gay marriage is not the worst imaginable insult to traditional arrangements. Are you all really confident of the result if a Muslim immigrant sues for the right to bring his second, or third, or fourth wife into the country, just as he was able to bring his first wife? If he claims that his religion demands this of him? I'm not at all confident I know how that suit turns out.

I am in awe of generalities such as 'bars are the focus of most gay socializing.'

You could say the same about the Irish, I suppose.