Relbeek opens himself up to a cheap-shot.
I would submit to you that opposing allowing gays to marry is being intolerant of the idea and therefore my definition meshes with the dictionary definition.
Now, I've opened myself up to a cheapshot from the peanut gallery, so I'll pause here and wait for it.
No one is saying that gays can't marry. [Gay man marries stright woman]. No one is even saying that gays can't each other. [Gay man marries gay woman]. All people are saying is that gays can't marry persons of the same sex.
Ok, that may have been cheap. But observing that gays can still marry does complicate the the argument that preventing same sex marriages is a violation of equal protection. The law, as it stands, applies to everyone, straight or gay, equally.
Of course, the same can be said for the miscegenation statutes. The law applied to all races equally. So what was the problem with miscegenation statutes? The text book answer is that race is a suspect class entitled to greater constitution protection. Homsexuality is not a suspect class and not entitled to as much constitutional scrutiny. Thus, laws preventing gays from marrying each other is subject to far less federal protection and is left more to local entities.
That is perhaps how it should be. Reasonable minds may differ on this issue. Some states should be permitted to allow same sex marriages, others may not.
Perhaps, but now we face the problem of the full faith and credit clause, where arguably states must respect the laws of other states, and thus respect marriages recognized by other states. For example, some states recognize common law marriages. Other states do not. But a common law marrige which emerged in a state recognizing such marriages must also be recognized by a state which does not recognize them should the couple move there.
I suppose we are just going to have to suck it up. States which fail to recognize same sex marriages are going to have to recognize them if they are performed in states that do. And that is that.
As far as this issue of tolerance and bigotry is concerned, it is an issue of semantics. The difference between "intolerance" and "disagreement" is a matter of degree. No one speaks of Hitler merely disagreeing with jews. Concentration camps were not just a way of resolving a disagreement. It was intolerance as public policy carried to a murderous extreme.
Similarly, one should be cautious when using the word "intolerance" in ordinary political discourse. Politics is nothing if it is not the process of how disputes over public policy get resolved. However, it is rare indeed that people on the same side of an issue beleive in that issue with the same degree of passion.
I would say that most people opposing gay marriage are not that passionate about it. They simply dispute it on common sense grounds. Marriage has always to them been between a man and a woman and they see no reason to change that. These people are not intolerant. They simply disagree. On the other hand, some people may pssionately hate gays for perfectly irrational reasons. These people are intolerant. It is a matter of degree.
Political issues can and tend to be realtively mundane. If a state decided to increse the speed limit from 55 to 65, would those favoing the change be considered "intolerant" of those against the change? No. That would be absurd. That's just a disagreement resolving itself through the political process.
Opposition to gay marriage is not really a black an white issue of tolerange and bigotry. Sure, there are some intolerant people opposing it, but as I mentioned above, most opposition is not due to intolerance. Most people opposing it vary in thier passion with which they do. To label all people against gay marrige as "intolerant" simply clouds the real debate and reduces the debate to an almost cartoonish level.
Mind you, reducing the debate to black and white terms is definately a popular method to rally support. It is awfully hard to get riled up about an issue without imflaming the passions. Thats why negative campaigning is so popular and always has been in politics. But it makes for bad public policy.
I would say that the left has used the rhetoric of "intoloerance" and "bigotry" more effectively than the right. And according to the law of unintended consequences the phenomena of the "looney-left" emerged. If one is going to effectively demonize the opposition to an almost cartoonish level, don't be surprised if a lot of people begin to seriously internalize that rhetoric. Those that do will begin to see the opposition in an extreme, hateful light. Thus, we have people like Narith who actually beleive that we are on the verge of internment camps for agnostics, that the majority of Americans are intolerant bigots, and that America should be spelled "Amerika."
Mind you, the right is also subject to the law of unitended consequences given its own extreme rhetoric. Thus emerged the term "right wing whacko." Replace "intolerant" with "unpatriotic" and you get the picture. But the left has been more effective. If you are against affirmative action, you are intolerant. If you are against diversity, you are intolerant. If you are against anything the left promotes, you are intolerant. Ordinary people, for the most part, get turned off by this absurd and simplistic reduction because they may simply diagree with, say, affirmative action for perfectly rational, fairness based, reasons.
So how are we going to resolve this "disagreement" over gay marriage? Let federalism take its course and move on.
religious institution. The "defense" of marriage for them is just that. If you also look at how many of these people would vote for civil unions, you would see the gap between what I judge to be truly bigoted and those maintaining that this particular act is a component of the church, and therefor defined by the church.