A straw man implies I am trying to convince you of something. I am just sharing my perspective. “Market based solutions” is no more a value than fear is. You ca

A straw man implies I am trying to convince you of something. I am just sharing my perspective. “Market based solutions” is no more a value than fear is. You can’t evaluate its efficacy without having a value with which to measure. There’s really no point in discussing politics at all without values. Personally I think it’s fucked up that government recognizes marriage at all. The benefits have very little to do with the pluralistic definitions of marriage that exist around the world today—tax benefits & visitation rights are not closely related to tying family assets together OR romance. It’s abhorrent that these rights were ever denied to couples regardless of whether they married or not. Religious couples deserve these rights regardless of marriage too. It makes no sense to recognize marriage at the state level. As a gay man I have never nor will ever have any ambitions of marriage, but these rights are still denied to me. I hope you can see through this that the policy and dialogue championed through partisanship is divorced from values that I hold dear, though I emphatically do not begrudge the gay couples that did find a victory through the policy.