Politics: why should the states decide?

Bush wants an amendment banning gay marriage, with a loophole to let civil unions and the such be legal on a state by state basis. John Kerry and Edwards and even Dick Cheney, proving that he has some humanity, want the states to decide.

Why is this a federal-vs-states rights issue and not a human rights issue? Why does the Church get to tell the State who it can say is married?

If we have a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between and a man and a woman, allowing potentially for civil unions that, for legal purposes, are equal to marriages (except for the gender differences of the participants), then we have an amendment that is pure semantics. It has no PRACTICAL consequence, ONLY a semantic one, to not offend those whose religiosity defines marriage as between a man and a wife. Now sure, maybe the Founding Fathers put a few God references in the constitution in between bonking their slaves and stuff like that, and maybe some of them thought that they were good Christians and maybe even thought of the Bible as an absolute. But it is not in the best interest of anyone for the State to behave on those assumptions. If the State can choose a religion or religious tradition to base its policy upon, it can also change that religion. And so while it might sound great to the Christians if Bible-fearing nutcases take over the government, they'll be sweating it 200 years from now when Bokononism becomes the new State religion, and all the Christians are executed on the Hook. You'd think watching the Middle East conflicts would show the Christians of America that theocracies are dangerous, not for when they are doing the Will of God, but for when someone not interested in the Will of God pushes the "good" people out of the way and abuses power. This isn't revolutionary thought.

I'm no Islamic scholar, so if what I say now is wrong, forgive me. But, I don't think the Islamic community, on the whole, is as fractionated as the Christian community. Sure, a Bible-thumper might lead the country, but is he Catholic? Presbyterian? Baptist? I mean, there are some SERIOUS differences of policy that could come out of partipants of those faiths having too much power. While there might be some common Christian values that permeate our society, the specifics, things like Constitutional amendments aimed at establishing a semantic definition of a religious rite manifested into public policy for legal protection of the parties that enter into it, get messy really really really fast. I mean, sure, there's Sunnis and Shiites and all that stuff that I know little to nothing about. But those differences are big, big enough that I don't think those people work together all that much. But Christian denominations are really good at thinking they all believe the same sorts of things, until they really sit down at a table and start hammering out their irreconcilable differences. They all reference God as the same God. But the way they know God differs widely.

So why should the states decide? Why do small concentrations of the socially ignorant get to tell those that live within the same borders as they who they can (legally) sleep with? Why doesn't somebody besides Ralph Nader stand up and say that our country isn't in the business of arbitrarily limiting the freedoms of those who live here?

Why can't people mind their own business, and not worry about whether someone's life partner, who happens to be the same gender as he or she, gets to be present at the end-of-life? Why can't a woman draw another woman's pension, when they have functioned as a family their entire lives? Why is it so terrible that people do what is natural to them if it isn't hurting anybody else? Sure, a natural born killer can't be let loose. But a guy who wants to walk in the park holding the hand of another guy instead of a girl isn't hurting anybody. He isn't corrupting my children. He isn't molesting them. He isn't trying to recruit them into something hateful or destructive. He's trying to be himself. And that's all any of us should be trying to do.