How do SSMers justify discriminating between SSM and the rest of nonmarriage?

Here are snippets from an exchange between myself and an SSMer, John, at the Ruth Institute's blogsite.

I had said that,

Society may justly discriminate between marriage and nonmarriage. The gay subset of nonmarriage is not justly favored over the rest of nonmarriage.

And it would not be just to abolish from the law and culture the core meaning of the social institution of marriage which justifies the special status of marriage in our laws and culture.

SSM argumentation is full of gibberish and nonsense thinking. The first is that legal requirements are decisive when deconstructing marriage but irrelevant when it comes to the SSM idea. The second is actually the first resort of the SSM campaign — namecalling and whining about the lack of special treatment for gayness.

John replied,

Lumping committed same-gender relationships of a romantic nature with all other relationships that are not between legally married persons is ridiculous.

Chairm:

Is romance a legal requirement for people who’d SSM? Nope.

Meanwhile romance is not a trump card for those two-sexed scenarios ineligible to marry. Why do you think it ought to become a trump card for the one-sexed scenarios?

John said:

You are putting my seventeen-year, committed relationship with my husband on the same level as my relationship with my sister, my relationships with my neices, my relationships with my friends, my relationships with the people who work at local stores where I shop, my relationships with people who live on our street, etc.

Chairm:

Actually, I did not do that. SSM argumentation does that. Please attempt to distinguish the one-sexed type of relationship you have in mind from the rest of nonmarriage. If you cannot distinguish it before sticking the label, marriage, on it, then, you have failed to show how your SSM idea is the equivalent of marriage and superior to the rest of nonmarriage.

John said:

At the same time, you are elevating the relationships of men and women who meet, get blind drunk, and then marry in Las Vegas to being superior in every way, and deserving of special legal status, solely because one has a penis and the other a vagina.

Chairm:

False. I do not advocate for poorly formed marriages.

However, the prospect of irresponsible sexual behavior between men and women is rightly answered by the aspirational ideal - manifest in pragmatic laws that accord marriage a special status - that is at the core of the social institution of marriage.

John:

Before you try to accuse me of gay supremacist leanings, I do not think gay people or relationships are superior to straight people or relationships. Nor do I think the reverse. We are all human beings, and neither sexual orientation nor gender nor marital status makes one inherently superior to another.

Chairm:

Good to hear. I agree that the assertion of the supremacy of identity politics is undesirable and if it ever was to become entrenched in our legal system it would cause injustices.

However, the union of husband and wife has a special status for good reason. The SSM idea is a rejection of that. So it is incumbent upon those who adovcate for SSM to plainly state why society ought to accord special status for SSM - over and above the rest of nonmarriage. Also, since the SSM idea is promoted as being of greater societal significance than the marriage idea, it is a burden you carry to explain why the SSM idea is superior to the marriage idea.

The marriage idea: society responds to the two-sexed nature of humankind, the opposite-sexed nature of human procreation, and the both-sexed or complementarily-sexed nature of human community; marriage is a foundational social institution of civilization; its core meaning is, at the very least, universal across the anthropological and historical records: integration of the sexes combined with provision for responsibel procreation.

This has huge societal significance.

The SSM idea, not so much.

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Note that John agreed that it would be wrong to assert supremacy based on gay identity. Yet that is the effect of SSM argumentation. Also John's remarks suggest that he comprehends the problems of SSM argumentation and the unreasonable approach it takes toward lawmaking.

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The original blogpost by Leland is thought-provoking. It has generated almost 400 comments so far.

See: "Same-Sex Unions Are NOT Equal To Marriage".