Rather than wait a week for the podcast let me say; if you proposed that government ought to issue friendship licenses in order for friendships to be allowed, you would be accused of being a rabid totalitarian who wants the government to involve itself in the private lives of the subject population at the most intimate levels. If you propose that government ought to issue marriage licenses granting permission for two people to be married, you are like 99.5% of the rest of the population. There is no categorical difference between these two viewpoints, they are both equally authoritarian, yet the latter is considered permissible while the former is not.
Gay people nationwide can now receive permission slips from the government allowing them to be gay...It's sad that this is considered tolerance. Obviously, if government must monopolize the institution of marriage, it should do so for both gay and straight couples, since marriage is, or rather should be, a private contract, and private property is a human right not contingent on sexual preference.
It's sad that marriage remains a socialist institution. It typifies the most menacing of police state intrusion into the private lives of its subjects, as exemplified by my "friendship license" example. It used to be a fully private institution. The idea that marriage should be monopolized by the state has its origins in the proto-communist ideas of the French Revolution, and in the U.S., it only became a public institution to prevent interracial marriage -- hardly the epitome of tolerance of others. The present state of marriage is preferable to the one of yesterday, but it is only marginally worthy of celebration IMO.
