lom jaan, thank you for the complement. In this case, I am quite comfortable that the people who are arguing against my position are the ones who are driven by prejudice, or more accurately, "ta'assob," so much so that fail to even understand what I am arguing for. I of course have not fully and coherently explained my position and the reasoning behind it, to some extent purposely so, so some of the resistance is understandable. Here it is: I am not arguing for or against gay marriage. I am arguing that marriage is not an individual liberty. Instead, it is a status that a society recognizes to deal with the issue of children, therefore the society must have a say on the matter.
This is how it works, children are unable to take responsibility for themselves. So they are not free individuals as are adults. As such, there are all sorts of issues for which you are forced to assign responsibility for. There is no such problem with adults. Children's responsibility is either the family unit's or the state's. Traditionally, marriage is what has been used to recognize the family unit by the society, to assign benefits from the society to the family unit for the incredibly difficult and valuable service of raising the child from which the society benefits greatly (or harmed,) to assign responsibility to, and to protect. The idea behind marriage is to formalize and recognize this relationship. As I stated earlier, if a couple wish to have children outside of marriage they should not expect to receive the facilities and benefits from marriage. Society is a direct participant in this arrangement. Therefore it must have a say. If a community, say a state, does not wish to recognize marriage for gays, it has every right to do so. If a community wishes to recognize marriage of gays, it has the right to do so. In such issues, it is always better to make it as local as possible to avoid oppression of minorities as much as possible. So it is much better to allow each state to decide.
As I stated earlier, what is true is that most neither understand nor recognize marriage as such. For anyone or a society that do not understand or recognize marriage as such, whether they are for or against gay marriage, it does not mean that they are somehow more liberal or open minded, it simply means that they either are unfamiliar or have not thought through the issue of children, are punting the issues that will inevitably arise, or are fascists, i.e. would like the state to take over. In all cases, that person or society is for less freedom AND it will pay through the nose for its failure to deal with such an important issue. The US for example, and many other western countries are absolutely paying through the nose for this problem.