Gay marriage

On my facebook, every second post seems to be about people advocating gay marriage or homosexuality in general. They say how dare society try to restrict the definition of marriage. They say people who oppose gay marriage are bigots. But here is my question. Obviously, every word has a definition, and every word includes and excludes certain things. Marriage MEANS something. So how would a gay-marriage advocate define marriage. They might say something like marriage is the union of two people who love each other. But that definition is also bigoted because you are excluding unions of more than two people. How dare you say that polygamists don't love each other! Maybe polygamists should make some slick internet photo / caption showing three unions of people, two of heterosexual couples and one of a polygamist group with the caption: "Love. There is no difference." or "Do you spot the difference? If yes, then you're a bigot!" Or something along those lines.

Are gay marriage advocates willing to admit that they too are bigots by restricting marriage to just two people? Perhaps some of these advocates would say sure, let polygamists marry, why not? Ok, so now our definition must change again. Now it must be any size group of people who love each other. Sounds pretty watered down right?

But now we must go still further. We must define "love". Is love an emotion, a fleeting feeling? What is it? That's how a lot of people view love. According to this view of love, what if there is a couple who may not have these "feelings" all the time? If there is a time when they do not have these feelings, are they considered no longer married?

What about close relatives? Why can't they marry? What if a father and daughter wanted to marry? Would you try to stop this? Would you restrict the definition of marriage to exclude such unions? If so, you are again being a bigot and intolerant, two big no-nos.

Hmm, does marriage even have a definition any more? If so, what is it?

How about: "The union of any number of people which may or may not be based on the feelings they have for each other".

As you can see, if marriage can be anything, then marriage is nothing.

Also, why would the state have any interest in protecting such a nebulous concept? There is no practical reason for the state to have any interest in this.

I don't blame gay rights activists exclusively for this issue. It's the fault of the general population in my opinion. We already redefined marriage when people started getting easy divorces, when people decided from the outset that they would have no children, etc. We need to reclaim a Catholic understanding of marriage.

Perhaps it would be best for the state to just get out of the whole marriage thing altogether. It sometimes seems like a losing battle anyway. Well, it was already lost in Canada unfortunately.