As in, Marriage can be a union between a man and a woman, or, between two consenting adults of the same sex. The fallacy that the Republicans build their fearmongering on is this idea that they are somehow protecting regular, good old fashion heterosexual marriage. But does it actually need protection? Will gays, lesbians and transsexuals marrying do any real damage to your own ability to hold and sanctify your own marriage? No. You can argue that it cheapens it, but only if you're looking at your shoulder and getting bent out of shape about what somebody else is doing with their freedom.
Should we encourage that behavior with interracial couples? Should we encourage that behavior with marriages between people of different religions? How many layers of prohibition do we need to lay down on marriage before it's back to the traditional marriage we are supposed to value, as per the wishes of Christian Conservatives?
America's freedom was based on the idea that you may absolutely hate what somebody else does or believes, but the right they have to do what they please and believe what they please is your right, too, so you can agree to disagree. No church has to sanctify a marriage it dislikes or does not recognize, however much we feel contempt for them for that. But then, it isn't, or shouldn't be their business how we conduct our personal lives, apart from the extremes of human behavior. That, if nothing else, is what our freedom is meant to protect.
Ultimately, the real problem here is that one group of people can't stand another group of people having a freedom they consider abhorrent. They don't want to be constrained by the law from preventing it, they want the law on their side to undo it all.
But it's utterly unnecessary. They have every bit the choice to reject our lifestyles as we have to reject theirs, and that is a solution that holds the greatest peace, and the least contention between Americans. We should leave each other to live our lives as we see fit, rather than use the intrusive arm of government against the freedoms of one group or another.
We don't need to ban religion or any other bullshit like that. We also don't need to emphasize this as just the freedom of a few. This is about the freedom of all, the freedom to obey religious precepts, and the freedom to ignore them, renounce them if we choose. They are not different freedoms, they are one and the same freedom, and what strikes at the rights of GLBTs to marry can come back to strike at anybody else's rights if the faultline splits strongly enough.
You can marry the woman of your dreams, or the man who's Mister Right, and allowing Gays and Lesbians to do the same will not frustrate your ambitions. As for the sanctifying part? From what I have observed of marriage, it is not law that sanctifies marriage, it's the churches that make it a sacrament, and it's the people together, who pledge their fidelity and their enduring love who make marriages truly sacred.
That bond needs no government's unique, deliberately exclusive blessing to be what it is, and what Gays and Lesbians ask for is not that blessing, but the right to celebrate and have secular society recognize their unions, as they are blessed by their love and faith (whatever kind we can say is involved).
We need to say it will not be a question of whether marriage is a union between a man and a woman at all, but rather whether a matter of whether it is that, and also the union between folks of the same gender as well. They have have nothing to lose by recognizing the rights of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transexuals, and perhaps something to gain: the peace that comes from not fearing what is not truly a threat, from knowing that the sanctity of marriage is not something imposed from without, but gathered from within. The key to solving the social problem of marriage's decline in our society is not going to be denying the right to those who simply want to put an official stamp on their union, but instead by treating marriage less as a daycare for immature souls who don't understand the gravity of what they're committing to, and more like a matter of a friendship grown into something more.