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In honor of Sean Penn and Dustin Black's wonderful Oscar achievements, I present my top 6 most ridiculous CG arguments for gay marriage, in no particular order.

Enjoy.

1. Gay marriage doesn't affect your personal marriage or family.

True! It doesn't. Neither does abortion* law, in fact. Assuming that my hypothetical wife** and children all choose not to have abortions, how am I affected by abortion's legality or illegality? Or how about the death penalty? Whether we choose to execute certain classes of criminals doesn't have any impact on me. Or civil rights? I'm not black. Doesn't affect me. Why should I care if blacks get equal rights?

One of the reasons successful societies thrive is because the people who comprise them care about their collective social values. The notion that I must be personally affected to care about an issue is selfish and anti-social. I care about preventing gay marriage because I care about (what I believe are) the implications for society. You may disagree. We debate each other and try to persuade others. That's one of the beauties of America.

2. Who would actually choose to be gay?

I really like this one. The underlying rationale is that the gay lifestyle is so irrational, bizarre, abnormal, strange, repulsive, and/or subject to such inevitable persecution, that no one in their right mind would actually choose such a life. I.e., there is no redeeming value to being gay. Heh. If I were gay, I would be insulted.

The easy response to this is to simply point out that people engage in all kinds of irrationally destructive behavior. Who would choose to be an alcoholic***? Who would choose to abandon their children for their office secretary? People do. We don't rationalize it by saying, "Who would choose that? It must be normal!"

3. When did you choose to be a heterosexual?

This may be my absolute favorite. It's like a guy claiming he's actually a squirrel****, and when someone points out, "Um, no you're not," he replies, "Well, when did YOU choose to be human?" Oooo, good point. I give up. You're a squirrel.

The point of this question is to make homosexuality an immutable trait, like eye color, in an attempt to normalize it. "I was born that way, just like you," means, "I'm not responsible, it's normal, so stop telling me it's wrong."

4. Gay marriage is a civil right.

No marriage is a civil right. As it concerns the state, marriage is a social contract that grants special privileges because society recognizes associated benefits, and thus wishes to incentivize it. But no one has a right to it. If so, I know a slew of single heterosexual men and women who will stand in line to have their "right" fulfilled.

The real purpose of invoking the term civil right is of course to draw false parallels with the historical (and wrongful) persecution of blacks. More on that next ...

5. Denying gay marriage is persecuting gays, making them a second class.

Hogwash. There are no laws that prevent gays from voting, from purchasing property, from using the same restrooms and drinking fountains as others, from sitting wherever they want on a city bus. In fact, unless he or she advertises it, no one can even tell a gay person from a straight one. With very rare exceptions, there are no mass mobs mobilizing daily across the nation with the intent to destroy gay property or kill gay people.

6. Gays cannot marry.

This isn't so much an argument as it is a false premise. Of course they can marry. They can marry just like anyone else ... people of the opposite sex.

Oh, but you mean men can't marry men, and women can't marry women. Well, that's true. Society has placed parameters on marriage in several ways, for example, by applying age restrictions and forbidding recognition of sexual derivatives such as polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia*****. Marriage--and the societal benefits that attend--are reserved for a specific kind of union, one that any gay person can enter into, provided he or she meets the criteria.

These are a few of my favorite nonsense arguments about gay marriage. Note I'm not mocking the notion of homosexuality itself, but rather these arguments in favor of legitimizing it. I'm sure there are some compelling arguments for gay marriage. These are not among them.

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Footnotes for the hypersensitive:

* Calm down. Gay marriage is no more equivalent to abortion, etc. than larceny is to murder, except that they both share the trait of being felonies. Likewise, in my opinion gay marriage and abortion share the trait of both being non-impacting on my hypothetical marriage and family.

** Hypothetical, remember? I neither confirm nor deny the existence of a Mrs. Tex or little Texies.

*** Calm down. Homosexuality is no more equivalent to alcoholism than oranges are equivalent to tomatoes, except that they are both categorized as botanical fruits. Likewise, in my opinion homosexuality and alcoholism are both categorizable as irrationally destructive behaviors.

**** Relax. I'm not saying homosexuality is exactly equivalent to thinking you're a squirrel, anymore than Star Wars is exactly equivalent to Star Trek, except that they both take place in space. Rather, these particular "logical" approaches are similar in that they both come from outer space.

***** Calm down. Being a homosexual is not the same as being a polygamist, a pedophile, etc., anymore than a school teacher is the same thing as a policeman, except that they are both government employees. Likewise, homosexuality, polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia, etc. all fall under the same category of sexually deviant behaviors.