Is 'same-sex marriage' really marriage?

The Gay Divorcee, 1934

 

There’s an old Vaudeville routine that goes, “If I had some bread I could make a ham sandwich if I had some ham.”

I love words, and I get ticked off when people misuse them. A word or phrase is a shortcut, an abbreviation for a thought or longer sequence of words. The phrase “ham sandwich,” for example, is a shortcut to the mental picture of two pieces of bread with ham, and likely other ingredients, between them. If you don’t have any ham, don’t call whatever you’re making a ‘ham sandwich.’

So it is with the debate about ‘same-sex marriage.’ Marriage is, by definition, a legally recognized union for life between one man and one woman who have taken vows to be exclusively loyal to each other.

Supreme Court takes on Christianity versus homophobia

Can the law tell a Christian group what to believe?

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The Supreme court made a weird decision in 2010: Hastings College of Law at USC was within its rights to ban the student group called the Christian Legal Society because of its requirement that its members agree to the biblical injunction against homosexuality.

The ban was based on a campus policy that requires any student group to be open to all, "regardless of gender, race, creed, age, color, national origin, physical disability, or sexual orientation."

I am certainly no Supreme Court justice, but I don’t need to be: Justice Scalia already put it better than I could. He wondered why you would “require the campus Republican club to admit Democrats.” But he was in the minority.