Gay marriage

We haven't talked about gay marriage in a while, so I was glad to see Thomas Sowell write something today. He's against it, of course. I'm not sure about his reasoning, though. He first says that the current marriage laws discriminate against actions, not people, and that's okay because that's what laws are supposed to do. Some actions are good and some actions are bad. By this logic, gay people are perfectly free to do whatever they want with their personal lives. The law doesn't care. But the law does care about certain actions. He likens it to the bicyclist that wants to use the highway. Bikes aren't allowed on the highway. What's the cyclist to do? Well, according to Sowell, he can just give up his bike and get in a car. But what if the cyclist is not allowed in cars? Is that discriminatory? I think so, and I think that it is the better analogy. The GAO has famously identified 1138 ways in which the federal government treats [legally] married people differently from single people. Now obviously not every of the 1138 ways will benefit every married couple, but clearly some sort of discrimination against people rather than actions is at work here. Sowell then goes to argue that gay marriage should be illegal because, well, it's always been illegal. His facts are right, I suppose, but so what? Finally, he pulls out the old standby. Gay marriage should be banned because marriage is about procreation, and same-sex couples can't procreate. This argument has been thoroughly fisked by others so I won't address it here. But it certainly dies a hard death. I think same-sex marriage should be legal, and I predict that in 20 or 30 years, we will look back on today's debates the same way today we look back on previous debates of abolition, women's franchise, Prohibition, and civil rights, which is to say with wonder and sympathy.