Extreme and hateful words don't work. They don't convince anyone. They are just volleys in fighting a war of words. They are just popping firecrackers in a war of noise.

The good people on both sides of the issue are being honest about themselves, and speaking their own minds. The more angrily someone speaks, the less in control of their own mind they are.

It's easy to become mentally unbalanced over these cultural wars and all the things people are saying. Me, for example. I care about my gay relative who got married. I care about his love for his partner. I don't consider them to be the same as a male and female pair, but they do, so I have to respect that. However just as I don't think girls and boys are the same, I don't think same sex and opposite sex pairs are the same. However, I'm being told I'm a hater, and that throws me off balance. Even my relative, who had a ceremony, seems to have closed me off and written me off. It hurts a little to know I'm thought to hate him.

It's vital to stay on balance.

My desire to stay on balance is forcing me to return to Christian faith, because I've found that my mind is not a reliable basis for truth because it is just a processor. My contradictory thoughts inflame my emotions and it's tempting to give up and change my mind, but that would require me to kill off my sense of the value of my traditions and all the sacrifice that goes into fitting myself into this mold.

If I kill of one aspect of my sense of tradition, that is an extreme compromise, in the face of others whose minds are also merely processors, but whom don't seem aware that logic and objectivity aren't truly reliable. It's only how we treat others that shows who we really are.

My solution would be for gay people to create a new tradition, one that is honest that they are outside the biological aspect of reproduction, outside the traditional aspect of marriage being between male and female, and inside the tradition of marriage being for love.

Is it just that I want to retain some form of power in the marriage tradition? Well, okay but there are many ways to build and retain power without destroying someone else's tradition by wrestling away the definition of it. Control of language is a major form of power. Language is a shape for thoughts, but once again, though is just a process. I wish we didn't have to get stuck where we are, but we need to process what's happening in this culture. I'd prefer a clear shift and not a killing off of the old ways.