[UtahDan]

I have already said that I don't really oppose gay marriage (I'm not a big advocate either) but I think that the mutability/immutability question is a red herring. I want to test the premise that it matters.

The question is whether or not a government wants to sanction and promote a certain kind of relationship because either it is (1) a public good or (2) because it is viewed as an individual right regardless of whether it produces a good. Why does the question of whether one has any choice about desiring that relationship matter?

Human beings come with a variety of desires and there is huge variation in who gets what. We cultivate some of them and repress others. No one argues that is a public good that all desires be acted upon free from consequence, nor that an individual right that society should recognize attaches to every desire. A desire to give to charity is is one society promotes, whether or not everyone has that desire or can chose to have it or not have it. A desire to light things on fire is a desire that we discourage stongly, regardless of whether one's pyromania is mutable or immutable. One is a public good and one is a public bad.

Similarly, we recognize the right to be secure in our personal effects and to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, notwithstanding the fact that society as a whole may, at times, suffer in the name of protecting the right of an individual. Of course it makes no difference at all whether I can be trained to not desire this personal liberty or whether it is innate in me or anyone to want it in the first place. We recognize this as a liberty people should get whether they want it or not.

So to me the question is twofold with respect to gay marriage: (1) does it produce a public good that government should promote and/or (2) is it an individual liberty that government ought to protect regardless of whether or not it produces a good (though it may). I don't see where mutability or immutability fits into the analysis of either of those two points either for or against. Maybe that is not the point that is being made by AA, he may just be asking the question in the academic sense. I'm just suggesting that knowing the answer doesn't advance that analysis of whether it should be permitted or not in either direction.