I'm going to hate myself by the time I'm done with this post.
A refreshing glimmer of sanity in the darkening abyss of the ever-more secularized and increasingly relativist United States of America.
This is very common rhetoric of the religious right, and I'm still flummoxed by it. I don't understand the disdain for non-religious matters implied by using "secular" as a sneering description of non-Christian things and beliefs.
Also, while reality is absolute (running into a brick wall will kill you no matter how much you believe otherwise), the way we perceive it is entirely relative. Your beliefs are relativism. You think they make the most sense relative to the other beliefs you have been exposed to. They are not absolutely true.
The institution of marriage isn't some petty, meaningless, nonchalant "right"; it is an enormous act of privilege and responsibility tasked with the most important of goals: the procreation and raising of new, productive members of society. Marriage doesn't exist merely so that Bob and Steve can play House together in their forties. And if you think otherwise, then you've either misunderstood the gravity, pertinence and seriousness of the institution of marriage or are willfully and disingenuously insisting on a baseless "redefinition" of "marriage."
Marriage is about more than having and raising children. It's also about two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. Are you married? Do you love your wife? If Bob and Steve love each other, then why are you completely unaffected by that?
It's ironic to me that, as grandiosely as you treat your beliefs, that the idea of marriage as merely a means to have and raise babies is extremely prosaic. Wouldn't you think that something created by God would have more of a spiritual side to it than that?
You can procreate and raise productive members of society without being married.
And how are we, then, to oversee the obligations attendent upon procreation from a socio-economic view if the necessity of marriage is annulled?
I don't understand how this reply does anything to diminish King in Crimson's comment.
You're in favor of denying rights to a group of people based on a trait they don't control. What would you care to call it?
As I've written extensively on, one cannot deny the "right" for same-sex people to "marry" because "marriage" between two people of the same sex is a logical absurdity. One cannot pass a law to repeal gravity any more than one can pass a law to "allow" same-sex "marriages."
If you're speaking from a Biblical definition of marriage, then yes, you are right.
But human society, more and more, has decided to change the definition of marriage. No matter how much you argue against it, you cannot stop it. Marriage already is basically a secular institution. If two people can go and get married at a courthouse by a judge, it's not really a religious institution anymore.