"Jesus would rather kill, not marry, gay people" - Franklin Graham

[Angrboda]

Except for equal treatment under the law. Marriage is a legal institution, Steve. Denying gays marriage is to deny them equal treatment. Keep telling yourself that you're not a bigot. It won't change the facts, but I'm sure it will make you sleep better at night.

Wrong again. Marriage is not a legal institution--in any way. It is easy to see that out of the 10,000 years of existence, the government has imposed a few rules for like the last 5 minutes.

If one wants to incline in that direction, then marriage likely has been nothing more than an exclusivistic bonding between one sexual being and another throughout the course of history. In that case, there likely have been same-sex marriages throughout the course of history, they just haven't been recognized as such by legal or religious authorities. Which raises the question of specifically what you're referring to by 'marriage'. As already observed, you seem to conflate talking about the definition of the word with talking about the institution, depending on what's most convenient at the time. Now you have raised the question of whether you're talking about a formal and officially recognized institution, or an informal one, not involving either religion or government. Given that humans are animals and as a behavior, are inclined to engage in pair bonding, it's reasonable to conclude that same-sex unions, informally, have a longer history than you're acknowledging. As noted in prior discussion, homosexual subcultures have existed for a long time. Are you suggesting that people in such sub-cultures didn't engage in such pair bonding simply because they were homosexual? If so, I'd like to see your argument for that. Otherwise, you're likely simply wrong that heterosexual unions have set any kind of standard, historically. This is especially true when one acknowledges the fact that sanction of homosexual behavior is long standing, and any heterosexual bias in the representation of same-sex unions among officiators of such, whether formal authorities or religion, is likely an artifact of prejudice rather than a reflection of the true state of human behavior. In short, your marriage argument appears to be foundering on the anvil of some very foundational questions.