Law school warps your mind in to an endless debate about where to draw lines. So I put this out to the gay community:

• Would gay rights advocates support a minority of murderers who believe they have a "fundamental right to kill people" and are therefore being discriminated against by people whose morals dictate that murder is wrong?
• Would it be wrong for those who believe murder is immoral to seek passage of laws to outlaw murder in their society if they believe it to be wrong?
• Would seeking passage of anti-murder laws amount to "hate" of murderers?

I can see the counter argument: murder affects the rights of another person, whereas gay marriage does not affect the rights of anybody but the gay couple.

In actual practice, however, gay marriage has been shown to affect the rights of parents to dictate the values their children are taught in school, the rights of doctors to refuse to artificially inseminate lesbian couples based on contrary religious values, and the rights of religious based adoption agencies to refuse adopting to homosexual parents based on the church’s religiously based opposition to homosexuality.

The end result is the same. Murder impinges on the right of the killed. Gay marriage impinges on the free exercise of religion and on the right of parents to choose what values their children are taught.

These are important rights to religious folks and parents, and must be part of the equation.

** Aside: I can’t help but wonder if gay marriage would come out differently if (1) gays would agree with notification to parents of all gay rights materials distributed and taught in schools and allow parents to remove their children when objectionable values were discussed (or at least be notified and have the opportunity to instill different values to their children, (2) leave small children out of the equation and, if gay rights must be discussed, do it at an age-appropriate level where a child is mature enough to have the sexuality discussion, and (3) allow for religious based values to be respected when those with religious values and gay rights come into direct conflict.

From a recent article detailing the steps the gays are taking against the Mormons was this interesting tidbit :

"At a fundamental level, the Utah Mormons crossed the line on this one," said gay rights activist John Aravosis, an influential blogger in Washington, D.C.

"They just took marriage away from 20,000 couples and made their children bastards," he said. "You don’t do that and get away with it."

OK, so I may have a degree in Molecular Biology, but can somebody explain to me how gay couples have children? Better yet, will somebody explain to me how a gay couple could have a child that is not a bastard (i.e., born of two parents that are not married)?