Hi, thank you so much for your kind message.  

I do agree that there should be some degree of separation between the Church and the State, though we might differ on how much exactly.  But that’s not necessarily connected to your next questions, because the reasons people oppose gay marriage is not because it is against their religion but because they believe it is bad for society and that it is a distortion of the truth.   Consider it like this, imagine you asked me:

Don’t you think religiousness should be separate from the government? for example, don’t you think its a bad idea to have thousands of people forcing laws against murder? that is something I struggle with a lot. I believe people should not be killed, but I do respect murderers, shouldn’t they be allowed their own decisions? isn’t that part of their free will? why do we need to prohibit murder?

Now, I’m not saying same-sex marriage is murder, or that it is as bad, and I’m not trying to draw any equivalency between the two.  I’m merely pointing out that we oppose both for the same reason, because we know they are both wrong and that legalization of either will hurt society in some way.

Now, this doesn’t take away their free will, people have free will to break laws.  The law does not take away your free will, it simply holds you accountable to the choices you make with it.  Also, it should be noted, from a legal perspective, we are only opposed to having the government  sanction gay marriage, because the government is a civil authority, and if the civil authority distorts truth to the people who it is charged to protect, it is not doing its duty.  The Catholic Church does not push for laws against people of the same-sex who want to live together and have a sexual relationship together.  Therefore, we are not imposing anything on anyone, we only ask that the government not teach untruths to its people.

You can’t call it derailing the argument just because I disagree with you.  I don’t know where this idea developed.

Anyways, that’s actually the complete opposite of the point.  There is no correlation between being a “man just like me” and same-sex relations being acceptable.  That argument would only make sense if I thought that it would be morally acceptable if I had same-sex relations.  Since I do not believe that it would be morally acceptable if I had same-sex relations, and have shown why, then there is no reason why “being a man just like me” would make it morally acceptable for that individual to have same-sex relations.

Experience of systematic systemic persecution is irrelevant.  The question we’re analyzing is not whether persecuting gays is wrong, of course it is, the question is whether a same-sex union can validly contract a marriage.  Answering that question requires no experience of systemic persecution.

But in case you’re wondering, what you just did, bringing up systemic persecution in a discussion about the essential characteristics of what makes a marriage, is an example of derailing, or as the rest of us call it, a fallacy in the form of Ignoratio Elenchi.

I have a quote for you.  It’s from GK Chesterton’s book, “Heretics.”  The context is that he is describing how so-called intellectuals, in trying to be more democratic, and “fair” to the poor, are actually treating them like an animal to be studied, and not a human being.

A poor man is a man who has not got much money. This may seem a simple and unnecessary description, but in the face of a great mass of modern fact and fiction, it seems very necessary indeed; most of our realists and sociologists talk about a poor man as if he were an octopus or an alligator. There is no more need to study the psychology of poverty than to study the psychology of bad temper, or the psychology of vanity, or the psychology of animal spirits. A man ought to know something of the emotions of an insulted man, not by being insulted, but simply by being a man. And he ought to know something of the emotions of a poor man, not by being poor, but simply by being a man. Therefore, in any writer who is describing poverty, my first objection to him will be that he has studied his subject. A democrat would have imagined it.

This quote is important because it responds to the massive mistake you make in trying to claim that we cannot understand the experience of a gay individual.  Just because I am straight does not mean I do not know what it means to be gay. 

A gay man is nothing more than a man who has a sexual attraction to men.  I know something about the emotions of a gay man, not by being gay, but simply by being a man.  When you claim that the feelings and experiences of gays are so enigmatic to the average straight man that they simply cannot comprehend it, what you are essentially saying is that gays are “different,” that they are an other, which is wrong.  In saying this, I recognize that the gay man is a man just like me, by your claim that a straight man cannot understand a gay man, you are making them into a species unto themselves. 

The gay man is not an “other,” the gay man is my brother.

I disagree, the love between life partners is not the same across the sexes. 

Emotionally speaking, I love my life-long friends who are girls very differently than I love my life-long friends that are guys, and I’d imagine the difference would carry over to romantic relationships too.

But that’s not all, as far as biology goes, we know that no two people of the same sex can create new life in the manner a heterosexual couple can.  This difference is fundamental to the nature of the relationship because it means that a heterosexual marriage is life-giving, and it exists to serve something.  The love of the marriage thus spreads outwards into the greater society.

A same-sex relationship can do the exact same thing in two ways, serving the community and expressing a deep emotional connection, which are marks of a friendship, but it cannot do it in a sexual manner, which is the mark of a marriage. Sex between people of the same-sex simply cannot happen because sex is necessarily ordered towards procreation.  From an ethical perspective, sexual acts between people of the same-sex are nothing more than mutual masturbation, and therefore, same-sex couples cannot achieve the complementary and procreative sexual union upon which marriage is built. 

So no, erotic love, the love of marriage, is dependent upon the sex of the people in the marriage.  If you’re arguing with that, your beef is not with me, it’s with biology. 

Ah, so you recognize that people can love each other in different ways.  And not all loves are similar.  And that some loves are “marriageable” and others are not. 

And therefore, just because 2 gay men can love each other, does not mean that they can or should get married. 

I’m glad we could agree.

Then you’re not arguing for gay marriage, your arguing for the legal benefits of marriage.  Which is fine, let’s give these benefits to all couples who want one, regardless of what their relationship is.  Call it a civil union or w/e.  A mother and child, a sister and brother, two friends, etc could all apply for these civil unions.  So everyone can have these benefits, and yet, we don’t need to allow civil gay marriage. 

Non sacramental marriages are not invalid.  The Church accepts and believes we must defend natural marriage (any union between a husband and a wife regardless of creed) as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_marriage