Anti gay-marriage atheist??

[Catholic_Lady]

My husband left for a trip and I'm bored. Meaning It's one of those evenings where I look for any excuse to post lol. 

I was browsing my facebook news feed today and came across this article called The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage, posted by an acquaintance on my friend's list. I thought it was very out of character and was curious to hear you guys' opinions/comments/counter arguments on the points being made. Fire away!! 
  

I am an atheist, and have no religious reasons for denying gays the right to be married; but, I have very secular reasons. 

1. The primary evolutionary purpose of a man and a woman is to propagate the species and raising children. 

2. Homosexual men are more than twice as likely to spread HIV and other STDs than straight men, which applies to lesbian woman too. 

3. Homosexual men and lesbians are much more likely to have serious substance abuse problems. 

4. Gays are not the proper role models to raise children. Children need a real female mom and a real male dad, one of each. All recent studies prove that children are best raised by a man and a woman. New Research on Children of Same-Sex Parents Suggests Differences Matter. 

Some argue that the link between marriage and procreation is not as strong as it once was, and they are correct. Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation. In the 20th century, Western societies have downplayed the procreative aspect of marriage, much to our detriment.

As a result, the happiness of the parties to the marriage, rather than the good of the children or the social order, has become its primary end, with disastrous consequences. When married persons care more about themselves than their responsibilities to their children and society, they become more willing to abandon these responsibilities, leading to broken homes, a plummeting birthrate, and countless other social pathologies that have become rampant over the last 40 years. 

Homosexual marriage is not the cause for any of these pathologies, but it will exacerbate them, as the granting of marital benefits to a category of sexual relationships that are necessarily sterile can only widen the separation between marriage and procreation. The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage.

If the state must recognize a marriage of two men simply because they love one another, upon what basis can it deny marital recognition to a group of two men and three women, for example, or a sterile brother and sister who claim to love each other? Homosexual activists protest that they only want all couples treated equally. But why is sexual love between two people more worthy of state sanction than love between three, or five? When the purpose of marriage is procreation, the answer is obvious. If sexual love becomes the primary purpose, the restriction of marriage to couples loses its logical basis, leading to marital chaos.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/are-there...024CEDB973