Existence and legitimacy are separate characteristics. Human beings have the mental capacity to make their own judgments of legitimacy, regardless of what the law says.



I'm not talking about social norms (or what you consider to be social norms), I'm talking about legislation and government. These are not synonymous, nor even close to it.

Your appeals to history, usefulness, place in society, etc. are all hallmarks of conventional moral reasoning. Treating social institutions as ends unto themselves, rather than human constructs able to be changed and improved, is fallacious. The same arguments you make could be applied to inter-racial and inter-faith marriages as well, and in fact were until fairly recently, historically speaking.

The only reason you view gay marriage as a "special privilege" is because your concept of marriage is limited. You think of it as an institution uniting, specifically, a man and a woman, ideally to have children, raise a family, and perpetuate existing societal norms. The principled stance on marriage, in contrast to the conventional one, is that it is the legal joining of two people who are committed to each other. (In my opinion, even the restriction of "two" can be questioned.)

Legislation and government, at least in a principled democracy as America is supposed to have, isn't about reinforcing social norms; it's about providing citizens with equal rights and protections, and allowing them equal voices to shape their communities.

As far as "the benefit of the few": in what objectionable way do you believe that legalizing gay marriage would actually privilege the minority group of homosexuals above the rest of the country? What special advantages would they gain that others lack? I just don't see it.



You may view civil marriage as irrelevant and meaningless, but if you owned a business you would still have to give your employees' civilly-married spouses health insurance. That's "forcing" you to acknowledge their marriage just as much as legalized gay marriage would be.

The religious preference you suggest is discrimination based on sexual orientation, which has almost exclusively religious roots.