In my opinion, the word "marriage" and the concept of "marriage" should not be anywhere on lawbooks because it's a violation of the separation of church and state. Civil Unions between any two parties, regardless of sex or sexuality, with all the benefits of what we now call marriage, should be put into effect, and the word marriage should be left out of all federal and state legal language. It's a religious ceremony.
I think yours is basically an unbeatable argument. Without saying which way I voted, in defense of the mormon church and many other more mainstream religions in California, i want to provide some perspective on what is a very complicated issue for mormon people i.e. how nutty was the Mormon Church's position?
First, please do not think the horrible human history of sexism and racism (including what some would argue existed in the Church) and its parallels with this issue are lost on LDS people. And of course, there are some startling ironies with the fact that the Church would have greatly benefited from a looser definition of marriage back in the day. Church members have discussed this ad nauseam: separate but equal, church and state, polygamy, 1978 etc etc.
As I think someone was trying to link from wikipedia, there are many (otherwise?) progressive, European countries where they've gone through the hassle of defining things separately.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage including France and Germany. And the Church's belief on the issue is the position held by the overwhelming majority of countries of the developed and lesser developed world.
Even the few countries that have legalized SSM have only done so recently. Maybe the Mormon Church is overly influenced by old leaders, its members too zealous about following its leaders, and history will prove it all wrong. But even if The Church completely reversed its position tomorrow and used its small influence to legalized SSM in California and Utah, it would not leave the Church far behind even the most liberal countries in the world.
And even though it's very likely Obama said marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman because it was politically expedient (though of course he opposed the prop 8 amendment) , he still said it, and his nuanced view was not met with the same vitriol as for people who only had a slightly different opinion from Obama (i.e. the yes on 8 people)
So rather than pick on the easy mormon target (which is only 2% of California's population anyway) and create a straw man (blaming it all on the weird, hate-filled religion) I'm hoping people will look at the issue well beyond the Mormons.
For the official response:
http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/church-responds-to-same-sex-marriage-votes#continuedI shan't respond to "Trembling Eagle" - either anything he's written or will write.
Finally, since this is the Joy thread, even if you think I'm insane for being an apologist here, you've got to admit that there are a million things to be happy about with regards to Obama winning and that this surely is not as big a deal as either side are making it - relative to all of the other wars and acute injustices in this world that Obama will help lead us towards repairing.
