All the rights that you want to deny to other people are already guaranteed under the rights to (1) life, (2) liberty, (3) pursuit of happiness, (4) privacy, and (5) equal protection under the law. No law restricts other people’s rights the way that you want to restrict other people’s rights. Lawmakers won’t do it, and it would be unconstitutional if they did.

The reasons that you offer in support of denying rights — “costly” and “resource-intensive” and “risky” and “destructive to society” and “destructive to the planet” and “destructive to human rights” and “harmful to same-gender couples” and “crazy” and “impossible” — actually defeat you, because none of them are valid reasons for denying rights, and all of them are superstitions for which you haven’t a shred of scientific evidence.

Stop trying to speak about “the real demands of gay rights activists.” You are far too insulated and uninformed to be doing that, and you do it very poorly, as you are the antithesis of a gay rights activist.

Also, stop writing that certain rights are “more important” to me than other rights are. You have no knowledge of what my universe of rights is, or what importance I assign to each, or whether I would trade some for others, etcetera. You can’t make intelligent remarks about thoughts I haven’t even disclosed to you, so stop now.

The U.S. Constitution does not predicate anyone’s rights upon any specific type of conception, gestation, or birth; it bestows the same rights to all living human beings, period. Being conceived, gestated, or born differently does not make any person unequal (even if you wish that were the case).

Your argument that when same-gender couples have marital relations then opposite-gender couples see all their rights vanish is just as ludicrous as its predecessor argument: when same-gender couples have marriages, then opposite-gender marriages become unholy. Both arguments are equally false — and laughable. The latter has already been laughed out of courtrooms; the former, if anyone is so stupid as to attempt it, will, likewise, also be laughed out.

You ask why same-gender couples want to have and raise children. They do for the very same reasons that opposite-gender couples want to have and raise children. Same-gender couples can and do reproduce, and no intelligent, informed person in modern times has argued otherwise; therefore, it’s a falsehood for you to say “they’re unable to reproduce” and “it doesn’t matter anyway” and “nothing else matters.” Yes, they’re able to, and yes, it matters to them, and yes, everything else matters, too.

Remember that our unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are endowed on the basis of our creation being equal, that we were all created through the union of a man and a woman using their own genes and having natural offspring together. If we break away from that and start making some people from modified gametes, we will no longer all be created equal and so the basis of all of our rights will vanish. It might not be obvious to you, or maybe you don’t care, but that’s the fact and you should have to start explaining why you want to destroy the basis of equality and rights, just to create babies for same-sex couples. Why do they need to be allowed to do that? Supposedly it didn’t matter that they were unable to reproduce, now all of a sudden nothing matters but that? Sorry, game over Ned.

All current marriage laws (same-gender and opposite-gender) are for two persons only. That was by design, and no one is proposing any other number, so this is not the raging issue that you imagine it to be, or that you wish it to be.

Your obsession with “uniqueness” remains unexplained and unjustified. Nevertheless, same-gender couples are every bit as unique (or not unique) as opposite-gender couples, so your “uniqueness” topic is unnecessary, and irrelevant.

Likewise, your obsession with “before the law enters” also is suspicious in its illogic.

You write “mere assertion doesn’t answer” and indeed that is so. Apply that rule to the content of your own messages, and you’ll be all caught up.

The marriage laws did not change; the existing laws were merely extended to include citizens that were previously excluded. You obsess over what you call “SSM law” but there is no such thing as the “SSM law” that you imagine; they’re all just “marriage laws.”

It’s unclear why you keep commanding me to “justify the law.” Ten statutes were drafted, debated, passed, and enacted by duly elected representatives. They satisfy — and are satisfied by — all the respective state constitutions, and the federal constitution. None are under challenge in the courts. That’s all the justification that society requires.

Relinquishment and adoption are accommodated for same-gender couples just as they are for opposite-gender couples; whenever it’s necessary, it’s done, and it works.

Siblings! Again, you raise another false “issue” that is already perfectly satisfied by existing marriage laws. Marriage to siblings is not permitted, whether same-gender or opposite gender, so the existing law is just fine.

Your fixation on identifying “boundaries for eligibility” for same-gender marriage is easily relieved. Just use the same boundaries already itemized in the ten active statutes, and you’re all set. The boundaries for opposite-gender marriage work equally well, too, absent the gender-based restriction.

You want to make this far more complex than it needs to be — number of spouses, uniqueness, pre-law, relinquishment, adoption, siblings, eligibility, status, etcetera — because within that complexity you hope to find some opportunity to halt same-gender marriage.

If you weren’t so fixated on stopping it, you wouldn’t suffer so much when discussing it.

Lots of couples get lots of help with fertilization, surrogacy, pregnancy, and birth. They are entitled to use physicians for that technical assistance. But a statute that outlaws same-gender couples for pursuing what opposite-gender couples pursue is unconstitutional from the outset.

It’s clear that you want to outlaw the creation of biological genetic offspring from two people of the same gender. What’s not clear is that lawmakers will find any legal basis for doing so, especially with that running-off-the-road screed about “big government agencies manufacturing people and destroying the basis of equality and rights and dignity.” Whether parsed or taken as a whole, that’s the kind of phrase that arises when a fearful lunatic fringe wants to coagulate all its insecurities into one big, threatening, boogey-man enemy.

My response is just to you, just about what you wrote.

The only criticism of my comments comes from those whose argument they defeat. I’m perfectly comfortable with what I said, and am satisfied, given your inability to respond.

I use the term “same-sex conception” to refer to creating biological genetic offspring of two people of the same sex. So I don’t use the term to refer to third party reproduction, or surrogacy, or anything where the child is the genetic offspring of a man and a woman, the natural fertilization of a woman’s egg by a man’s sperm.

“Individuals and couples already have all the rights that they need to conceive.”

Nah, they are getting away with it, but there is no right of an individual or a couple to create an embryo except by marital intercourse. But that’s not important, I am not arguing to prohibit IVF or third party conception, just same-sex conception, as defined above (and all attempts to make an embryo except by joining an unmodified egg of a woman and an unmodified sperm of a man).

People are continuing to use whatever methods are available, and there are no plans to stop them from doing so.”

Well, I’m trying to put a limit, to preserve natural conception rights and stop the big government agency from manufacturing people and destroying the basis of equality and rights and dignity.

Remember that you want to oppress only same-gender couples.

Ah, come on it’s not oppression that they cannot reproduce offspring together using their unmodified gametes.

I doubt he takes the legal centric approach that you do, Ned Lahert, because his book on marriage is framed as a study of the history and anthropology of the marriage idea. E has described the SSM idea as a conceptual mess. He has not recanted any of that, he says.

So what is this SSM idea that he now accepts?

Your response to my query the SSM idea as a conceptual mess. And your comments have not provided an apt response to Blankenhorn’s dislike of the ‘culture war’. But they do undermine the SSM campaign quite readily. That you are not aware of what you have done here is perhaps not surprising because the SSM campaign has taught its supporters to assert but not to reason soundly.

I did not ask what you claimed I asked.

Readers can check for themselves. I asked about the type of relationship before the law enters the picture. I was explicit on that point.

I did not ask for a pointless count of minutes. It was pointless by your own account, Ned, when you noted that, in your account of SSM law, none of these activities are required and are thus irrelevant to even your own recasting of my query.

And, as I observed, a type of relationship is unique or it is not unique. There is no degree of uniqueness. Your comment ilustrated that the type of relationship you have in mind is not unique among the range of one-sexed relationship types.

Loving, you said. But that is not a legal requirement in SSM law. Nor is it unique to SSM, if indeed it can be counted as a definitive feature of SSM. Loving sibling friendship can meet your list quite readily, for example. Indeed there is no justification in your account for limiting SSM to a count of two participants only. Mere assertion does not answer my query. This is so for your rhetoric and is so for SSM law as well.

Justify the law if you think the law is right.

As I said, sometimes the law gets stuff wrong.

As for children attained in a one-sex-short scenario, there would be at least two pre-requisites and both are extrinsic to SSM: parental relinquishment by the mother or the father who is not a participant in the SSM; and adoption y the non-parent who is a participant in the SSM. Neither is automatic via SSM law. Neither is intrinsic to the one-sexed scenario. When you point at children you point outside of this type of relationship.

Besides, siblings could meet this requirement, but you did not mention relatedness in all your sophistry. Perhaps that would not factor into your thinking. Please clarify.

You proposed that willingness and desire for legal recognition are trump cards for eligibility. Yet how can that justly be denied threesomes or moresomes or related people? SSM law needs justification that you have yet to supply as per my query.

Permancence is not a legal requirement of SSM law. You have asserted arbitrarily and even in responding to your own recasting of my query.

In the meantime you invoked certain rules of pro-SSM argumentation when you spoke about procreation. Your SSM idea is destroyed by application of those rules you think are decisive.

The marriage idea faires much much better. Here we are discussing the type of one-sexed relationship that you think merits special status (marital status is a special status) and around which reasonable boundaries for eligibility can be justly drawn. You have barely touched this basic task.