(Gay marriage discussion)
Not unless I can get the same legal rights between me and my buddy Alex, between me and my mother, between me and my manager (if I ever get employed again), and between me and my dog, Brick.
There is nothing which makes a gay relationship any better than these. In fact, there is less in most cases. A child has a natural right to a mother. A manager and an employer also have a very special relationship.
Marriage proper is how children come about. Children have a right to a mother and a father by the nature of the sexual act, and they have a right for that mother and father to love each other, love the child, and love God (insofar as they are able).
You take away - or worse, trivialise - a part of a man's life story by giving him two mothers or two fathers, and making the kid the child of one of 'em and a sperm donor, or one of 'em and an surrogate, or one of them and a nameless woman who gave her eggs away. A man has the right to be wanted by both parties from the beginning. (Now, there are other reasons why surrogacy, artificial insemination, in vitro and the like are wrong, and I shall not get into those here.)
I agree teen pregnancy is a problem. I agree a child's parents should love each other, as well as the kid. But the answer is not to breed kids and then give them over to people who feel entitled to a child, much less people who feel entitled to marriage (if there's a Ms. Right out there for me, I sure haven't met her!!), or even people who do not know what love is. Sex is not love. It is not the epitome of love. It is not the summit of love. It is not the proof of love. It is a tool to express love, just as a rum-and-coke or paying the bills, or a good massage might be.
It is also something more than that. The very fact that you can read this - or at you exist at all - is proof sex is far more powerful than we give it credit for. You gotta respect sex, because while it is not love and is a tool, it is also how we come into the world. And who doesn't thank their parents for raising them right (or wish their parents had raised em right)? We owe our lives, biologically and socially, to our parents. When they succeed society keeps on chugging. When they fail it is a catastrophe. The answer is NOT to hand children over to a family situation we don't know the consequences of - at best. The answer is to fix the situation we have by reforming our understanding of sexuality and the human person - to have more reverence for the thing, and to have more reverence for the child.
The government has no part in society when it comes to sex. This is an area outside of its jurisdiction. It must come from the grassroots level, just as it did 2000 years ago - and even farther back with the Jews. You cannot legislate morality. It has to be a part of the society first on a cultural level. I have to learn to be chaste, as would my wife (if I ever had one). I would have to teach my children, so they can teach their children. And we would have to teach our fellow Catholics how to be chaste as well once we had learned.
If God is on our side, nothing can stop us if we, the Catholic Church (and her anonymous allies) clean house and make ourselves in God's image insofar as we can, and then take it to the world. If He isn't, or worse doesn't exist, does it really matter? We'll fail, either way. The change has to start within one's own heart, not without. And I guarantee you legalising gay marriage will utterly fail. Just like Prohibition did. Just like legalising slavery in America up to the Civil War. Just like Plessy v. Fergusson. Just like the Comstock laws. People will either learn to respect their bodies - rather than indulging in them, or on the other hand hiding them like Puritans - or they'll continue oscillating between Puritanism and Paganism, so to speak - between indulging in their sexual cravings and hiding them for the well being of society.
Unless people begin living a balanced life. And that more or less, with very few exceptions, can only be found in the Catholic Church today (mind, I am including the Orthodox, who are more or less Catholic).