Example: a few years ago, Kris and I received a wedding announcement from an elderly couple that lived down the street from us. They are hardly new age hippies. They are bedrock conservatives and community activists and it’s not an exaggeration to state that the Catalina Foothills School District would not yet have its own high school without their aggressive campaign on its behalf. Their daughter had married in New York. They included the standard wedding announcement and photos of the bride and bride. Except for the fact that both parties were of the same gender, it was a traditional wedding announcement.

There are many people like our former neighbors in America. The number of friends and relatives of gay persons and gay unions is in the millions. Children are being raised by gay parents, gay couples own joint bank accounts and mortgages, and gay couples raise children and leave estates to their heirs. They vote, work, pay taxes, get sick, are cared for, and die in the arms of their same sex loved ones.

Yet, the President, by allying himself with ignorant bigots who insist that God has a stake in sexual politics, would relegate them, their loved ones, and their children to second-class citizenry. The President claims that marriage is irrevocably defined as a coupling of disparate sexes and wants that alleged reality codified into law. He and those who are like-minded claim that they are simply trying to protect the sanctity of marriage. That’s nonsense. What purports to be a defense of traditional marriage is actually an unhealthy obsession with genitalia. Those who claim to defend traditional marriage, like the President (who nearly drank himself into a divorce), are trying to reach into the pants of the populace and squeeze everybody into sexual conformity. The Supreme Court has wisely, and finally, ruled that the State has no business in the bedroom. It has no business in people’s underwear, either.

Gay marriage nearly became legal here in Hawai’i a few years ago. A backlash resulted in a vote that permitted the State Constitution to define “marriage” as a union between a man and a woman and the state Supreme Court upheld the right of the Legislature to pass laws to the same effect. The straights claimed victory.

But is this a victory? Is there really a winner when the state purports to define sexual correctness? Does anybody really want the police in their bedroom or in their shorts? Should any state government care who copulates with whom?

The notion that any legislature can protect marriage is silly. Many legislators do little, if anything, to protect their own marriages. The late Tam Kincaid, one of the brightest and most eloquent state representatives ever sent to Phoenix by Pima County, once told me that the overwhelming reason people ran for the Legislature was SEX. He was not kidding. Getting elected is a great way to get laid. These are the people who defend the institution of marriage?

The notion that lawmakers have to “defend” marriage is rooted in extremely undemocratic traditions. Sex was historically regulated by the monarch, and horny couples petitioned permission for “Fornication Upon Consent of the King.” (Note the genesis of a modern word for sexual coupling that was derived from this phrase.) Medieval audiences of relatives actually watched newly weds fornicate on their wedding night. This is the genesis of modern attempts by modern legislatures to regulate who boinks whom.

The fundamental question is this: who gets to define “marriage?” The President? The Legislature? The cops? If two people look each other in the eye, vow to stay together until death separates them, commingle their property into a merged identity, raise a kid and leave property at death, is that not a marriage? Does the lack of a bureaucratic piece of paper make it less so? Is this relationship meaningless unless the State sanctions it? Who gave the State the right to override love?

States should not define “marriage.” They can, and should, ordain laws that govern ownership of property and inheritance. They can, and should, enforce child welfare laws. But the State can do all that without purporting to regulate who loves whom and how. The State is all about property. It is not about love. Legislatures pass hateful laws all the time. They rarely, if ever, pass laws based on love. They have no capacity for love.

It is time for States to get out of the matchmaking business and leave that to churches and families. No state should define “marriage.” The concept of marriage preceded the United States of America and will outlive it. States should limit themselves to defining “civil unions” for the purpose of property distribution and inheritance and include heterosexual and homosexual unions in the definition. The State has no more right to decide who marries whom than it has the right to decide what we have for breakfast. There is no need for the State to “defend” marriage. If homosexuality constitutes a direct threat to traditional marriage, there is nothing the State can do to stop it. People will couple with whomever they please, with or without the consent of the King. Frankly, the notion that same-sex coupling threatens the hegemony of heterosexual coupling is ridiculous. As far as I can tell, heterosexuality is in no danger.

What we are really talking about is plain, old-fashioned bigotry, the attempt to relegate certain individuals to second-class status on the basis of a characteristic. Sexual orientation is a characteristic, just as is skin color, disability, national origin, and language. The attack on gay marriage, like Jim Crow laws and the oppression of females, is an attempt to keep the powerless powerless. And, like those earlier ventures into the cesspool of bigotry, it will be left in history’s backwash. The only issue is who gets hurt in the process.