The prohibition of gay marriage is clearly a double standard. But simply allowing gays to marry doesn't completely resolve the double standard. Either the legal benefits of marriage should be extended to literally all people, or there should be no such legal benefits for any people.
There is a sense in which that is true -- every legal status is, by definition, discrimination in the law.
But then, there is nothing wrong with discrimination, per se, what is wrong is discrimination on bases which do not serve a legitimate public purpose. Which, of course, takes a lot more work to identify than mere discrimination, but then, meaningful distinctions are often harder than meaningless ones. And, so, we end up establishing a series of explicitly suspect bases for discrimination such that we require a higher standard of proof that there is legitimate need being served and no better way to serve it for certain forms of discrimination, because of our experience of them being deployed inappropriately to keep groups powerless rather than to advance some legitimate common interest.
> But why can't two roommates in a plutonic friendship receive the same benefits?
(1) the word you are looking for is probably "platonic", unless this is some kind of friendhip oriented around money, cartoon dogs, deities of the underworld, or dwarf planets.
(2) Generally, law doesn't require a romantic relationship for marriage, it just requires appropriate age (sometimes with exceptions or variations with parental consent), specific gender combinations (except where same-sex marriage is allowed), not already being in a marriage with a different partner, and not being within a certain degree of consanguinity. So, platonic roomates can get married.
That's true, but that means it's not sufficient to denounce anti-gay marriage proponents simply because they favor discrimination.
> the word you are looking for is probably "platonic"
Yes, definitely. I actually looked it up to make sure I would spell it correctly, then still proceeded to spell it incorrectly.
In policy debates "discrimination" alone is often used (often on both sides of the debate) as shorthand for "discrimination not justified by a sufficient public purpose". This is fairly widely understood, but its easy to get tripped up over.
Valid point. But I could use other examples which generally are not allowed, like close blood relatives or groups of 3 or more people.
Baby steps, iterative process, etc, etc.