Actually, it's not. Both genders are treated the exact same. It's only discrimination in the sense that having separate bathrooms or changing rooms is discrimination, i.e. the literal meaning of the word which means to indentify a difference.

Exactly. Given all the financial and legal benefits to such arrangements, it opens the door for massive amounts of fraud to cost people and the public. At least with such marriages for different sexes, there is a long-standing tradition backing up marriage that would curtail the freedom of such persons to participate in a normal relationship. With same-sex marriage, a piece of paper that creates a legal fiction of a partnership between two such people, there is no traditional or cultural impediment to each of them carrying on with the partner of his or her choice, and meanwhile transferring funds to avoid taxes, protecting coversations and transactions from testimony, gaining otherwise unauthorized residential or employment benefits and so on.

The latter notion does not logically proceed from the former.

And what does that mean? "It does not affect you directly" is in no way a valid reason for closing off opposition. Did you ever hear of principles? Why must people be restricted to stands that only affect their well-being or interests? In fact, the OPPOSITE circumstance is generally prefered for a point of view because of a thing called "Conflict of interest." Your argument is essentially: "You have no conflict of interest, therefore you can only be driven by irrational emotions." Proven, my ass!

By this standard, the only people who should be allowed to have an opinion on the death penalty are criminals on death row, and the corrections officials responsible for them. The only people who should be allowed to have opinions on gun control laws are gun owners. The only people who are entitled to an opinion on whether or not to fight a war are soldiers. The only people allowed to vote on the display or prohibition of religion and religious imagery would be members of that religion. Oh, and go fuck yourselves, disease-charity-people; only people with diseases are allowed to contribute now. Anyone offering an opinion on those categories is obviously just scared. Proven.

HOW? What novelty institution are you planning on inventing and demanding legal enforcement of? The only precedent set by prop 8 is the right of the people to refuse to recognize special privileges and institutions forced on them by their goverment at the behest of tiny minority.

The outlawing of a real marriage because of the religion or other circumstances of the participants is illegal and unethical. Refusing legal recognition of a play-acting imitation of marriage is not at all related to forbidding some from participating in the general practice. Not even homosexuals are legally prohibited from getting married. Same-sex marriage is equally forbidden to all groups, and heterosexual marriage is equally permitted to all.

They are not legally enforced, which is the reason why they are not. What happens when spouse benefits start being cut by employers and various joint endeavors by couples start requiring exponentially greater paperwork and bureaucracy because of same-sex couples now claiming privileges intended to protect the basic relationship that underlies human society, but now made available due to a novelty practice made de jure by government fiat.

And what would those be? Make up your mind - is it something that affects no one but the couple in question, or will there be things in which other people are forced to comply with their partnership? Are you saying that employers who disapprove will not be forced to provide coverage for "dependant spouses" who are in a same-sex "marriage" with their employees? Are you saying that institutions or organizations will not be forced to treat such a relationship the same as they do a real marriage when ascertaining that criterion for whatever standards they hold?

But this farce requires me to not only accept, but support such relationships. There is no natural right to marriage, but same-sex marriage, if enforced by law, will infringe on the rights of those who do not recognize it as such.

Just because you don't belong doesn't mean you don't derive some satisfaction from your self-righteous posturing. THAT is why you are selfish - you are encouraging the government to tinker with institutions which will have no effect on you, but will affect millions of others, just so you can feel good about yourself. Who cares about the couples that will be deprived of the traditional benefits of marriage because the costs of extending them to same-sex "marriages" has forced them to be withdrawn? A bunch of smug moralists can congratulate themselves in striking a blow for equality because they are too dim to see the flaws in their comparison of completely unrelated issues.

I am not married to anyone, nor have I any intention of doing so in the near future, but I am standing up for the defense of that institution. So, yeah.