Gay marriage is a moot point.  For all the arguments and fuss, the truth is that the entire concept of gender as an opposite-and-clearly-divided-poles thing, the very foundation of the religious right’s “traditional” marriage, is dying out.

It’s not only the way in which the social roles of men and women have merged either, though there’s been an awful lot of that about.  Medical technology has progressed to the point where it is virtually impossible (at least without medical tests) to distinguish between the born male or female and the made one.  What becomes of the sacred cow of traditional marriage, when one of the partners goes from being the opposite sex to being the same sex?  Is that union suddenly nullified, never worthy of having been blessed in the first place?

The transexual population is growing, and a substantial number of people are choosing to become neither male nor female, but another gender entirely.  This will, I believe, ultimately turn out to be the larger population as these sorts of transformations do not necessarily require the radical and expensive medical procedures which are typical of full sex reassignment.  Furthermore, as the field of genetic manipulation becomes commercialized (as it inevitably will), I believe we will see things that we can only begin to speculate about now.  How can you frame the debate as marriage = 1 man + 1 woman vs. marriage = 2 committed lovers when the people in question are as likely to be a feathered biped and an ocean-dwelling furry thing?  Requiring such fanciful beings to adhere to strict notions of “male” and “female” seems downright silly.  

This, of course, is what really terrifies the fundies.  All their public bluster right now may be about gay marriage, but they’re trained to work in steps, to sneak their Jesus-based version of Sharia law in while regular folks are looking the other way.  Interesting though, isn’t it, that the folks who claim to speak for God have so much less imagination than God does?  I mean, whatever being created this planet had no problem at all with oddities of gender and sexual expression.  This is the being that created earthworms (bisexual hermaphrodites), anemone fish (change their sex so they can mate with whoever happens by), and slime molds (500 different “sexes”).  God obviously doesn’t have a problem with all this stuff, so why do “his” people have such difficulty with it?

You ask me, it’s because organized religion isn’t really the voice of God - it’s the voice of the other guy.