In a republic, the rule of law prevails rather than the rule of despots. These courts and Newsom stepped miles outside of the bounds of their offices as set by federal and state constitutions to override the will of the people. The courts and the executive are not there to invent their own laws.

There never has been anything stopping someone who has homosexual desires or has acted on such desires from getting married- though they're unlikely to want to do so. If there were a class of people who couldn't marry then it would be a matter of civil rights. But it makes no more sense for people to complain that they can't "marry" another person of the same gender than it does for them to complain that they can't "marry" their dog or their inflatable doll. What Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa did was radically redefine a word that has a perfectly clear meaning. Why? To grant legitimacy, official recognition, and government subsidy and benefits to a relationship which under any accurate name is easily recognized as entirely different from and inimical to the kind of marriage which is the fundamental building block of society.

There never has been anything stopping someone who has homosexual desires or has acted on such desires from getting married- though they're unlikely to want to do so.

Again, if some group of people democratically decides that they want to spend their tax dollars subsidizing perversion, teaching it in their schools, and propagandizing each other about how wonderful sodomy really is, then to the extent that people are free to leave that society and other societies are insulated from that society's poor decision, all one can say is "may the best set of ideals win in the long run." But to have a few corrupt officials force it down the nation's throat by declaring that gender has nothing to do with marriage and to have anybody who holds other standards labeled as a dangerous "antiprogressive" is abominable. Nor will those pushing the homosexual agenda be content to browbeat and threaten those who don't agree with their views in their own country (as well as resort to actual violence when they don't get their way- see the violence against blacks and Mormons after prop 8 passed in California) - they want to push their agenda down the throats of every nation in the world.

There's a reason why the decline and implosion of societies from ancient times to the present day has been strongly correlated with the rise of homosexuality and other perversions.

First, the institution of marriage has always been open to all citizens. Homosexuals have always been just as free to get married as anybody else. But two men can no more marry each other in any meaningful sense than they can "marry" their dog or sheep. There's also no more reason for society to spend efforts legitimizing and subsidizing homosexual relations than bestial relations. The fact that anybody thinks this is about trampled "rights" is a sad commentary on how messed-up society has become in the past 15 years.

Second, it's not at all the case that the American people have decided that encouraging perversion and calling it "marriage" is preferable to living in a society where moral standards opposing perversion are upheld. The people have never voted this way anywhere. Instead you have activist judges rewriting the laws- overriding the ability of people and communities and states to set moral standards in Lawrence v. Texas and Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health. You have the mayor of San Francisco openly defying the law. Every time the homosexual cause advances an inch it is with fresh injustice and abuse of power by corrupt officials.

The idea that you can eliminate tyranny by providing a laundry list of rights is ridiculous in any case. The real way the Constitution was to protect against the tyranny of the majority was giving the federal government limited and separated powers while guaranteeing autonomy to the states. The Bill of Rights was tacked on because people were (rightfully) worried that the government would exceed these limits without going through the rigorous amendment process, which requires a real nationwide consensus rather than a simple majority (or the whims of Congress or an activist judiciary or the executive, all of which will if unchecked usurp power to further their own agenda). So they enshrined a few basic rights as a safety barrier (which have since been vastly misinterpreted). This has little to do with slogans about the tyranny of the majority which are bandied about today.

The ideal of liberty which the left touts no longer makes sense- liberty to do what? One person argues it's their "right" to have their sexual relationship with their same-sex partner or their sister or their sheep declared a marriage ("love is all that matters right?") and given the government's sanction, blessing, and benefits. There is no way to grant this person this "right" without making a society into a place which is hostile to any and all standards of morality which denounce these things. That person's "right" conflicts with everyone else's liberty to raise their children in an environment they would term "moral." How do you decide between these liberties?

The left would force the entire world against their will to choose the first because that's "progressive." Progress towards what? These and other similar steps are only progress towards a worldwide leveled-down society of irresponsibility and debauchery which will be perfectly miserable in its perfect lack of culture and morals. This is the real tyranny of the majority- where no one can choose to live in a different kind of society because society is a worldwide homogenized Hades.

The alternative is to allow for local autonomy and let small groups of people decide what kind of society they want to become and which liberties are important to them. This is what the Constitution provided for, in the "laboratory of the states" the GP referred to. Different societal ideals and standards could be tried in different states and communities. People could choose the kind of society they want to live in. If it's done right, then communities are responsible for their own survival, which provides a selection pressure which eliminates the worst societal ideas and hopefully helps the world make progress. [I think that if you took a group of messed-up criminals and put them in a situation where they had to form their own society and their own laws and become self-sufficient to be able to survive, most of them would turn out ok and in the long run the crime rate in their society would not be too different from that in the society from which the first criminals were exiled.]

To some extent the experiment happened naturally in previous ages of the world. Societies would rise to power when their energy, ideas, and ideals were fresh and would crumble under their own weight of degeneracy, decadence, hyperlitigiousness, and corruption as they decayed, making room for other societies and ideals to step in. The American experiment promised that this process could be streamlined by making the upheavals less bloody and violent and more democratic i.e. maximizing people's ability to choose what kind of society to live in. But the decline of local autonomy in favor of national and international government is ending that experiment. When this global society unravels under the pressure of its decadence, who will be left to pick up the pieces? Who will provide an alternative? Even if there is one, the upheaval will be enormously painful and cataclysmic.

Theory:

A second possible etymology traces the word back to theion "divine things" instead of thea, reflecting the concept of contemplating the divine organisation (Cosmos) of the nature.

In your case, your state religion holds faith in the belief that there are no substantial negative social externalities to defining "marriage" in a way that is relatively untested in human history.

Likewise, you should be happy to exclude such sinful "homophobes" from your human ecology due to their hurtful environmental degradation.

Neither of you should impose your treatments on the other through any sort of legal sophistry. Consent is the prerequisite for civility.

So, the only 'sane' thing an ISP can do is disconnect anyone at the slightest hint of trouble - anything else could result in the blame falling in their lap.

I bet the ISPs are very happy at providing free policing services to the music/movie industries.. after all, they make SO much more money :/.