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

[robvalue]

I'm going to try and break this down one more time. This is how things seem to me.

You could think of all legal contracts in three sections :

1) The agreed legal terms between the relevant parties

2) Whatever further personal meaning the contract may have to the parties

3) How the contract is viewed by other people

On the whole, these three are independent. The law doesn't care about 2 and 3, as long as they don't somehow impede the whole legal system from operating properly.

In the case of marriage, it is a legal contract in many countries, including America. Whatever it was in the past is irrelevant to this point. I don't know how it's possible to even dispute this.

Point 2 would be the emotional weight the marriage has to the couple, and any additional promises they may make to each other. If these promises don't get incorporated into the marriage contract, then they only matter to the couple, and the law isn't generally going to consider them.

Point 3 would be where Steve and RR comes in. They may view a same-sex marriage as "not a real marriage", or "not a marriage", or even "not a legal contract". It ultimately doesn't matter what they think. This doesn't affect points 1 or 2. Everyone is free to have their own opinion, but it carries no weight if it isn't backed up by legal evidence; nor do the couple have to pay any attention to it for point 2.

I'm not sure how much simpler I could make this. The only argument left is that the law shouldn't have changed to allow same-sex marriages, for some reason. That's a matter of opinion, from a moral/societal perspective, unless there is (again) some legal support. Obviously there is not, since the high court have ruled after considering every relevant aspect.

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PS: the only other conclusion I can come to is that some people consider marriage to be magical, and not under the domain of human law.