sorry pacts, more politics

this has to be the dumbest anti-gay marriage argument i've seen, courtesy of thomas sowell:

Of all the phony arguments for gay marriage, the phoniest is the argument that it is a matter of equal rights. Marriage is not a right extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the rights they already have.
People who are simply living together can make whatever arrangements they want, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. They can divide up their worldly belongings 50-50 or 90-10 or whatever other way they want. They can make their union temporary or permanent or subject to cancellation at any time.
Marriage is a restriction. If my wife buys an automobile with her own money, under California marriage laws I automatically own half of it, whether or not my name is on the title. Whether that law is good, bad, or indifferent, it is a limitation of our freedom to arrange such things as we ourselves might choose. This is just one of many decisions that marriage laws take out of our hands.

Uh-huh. Of course our DECISION to enter into the partnership of marriage isn't relevant, because really whatitallabout is:

The issue is not individual rights. What the activists are seeking is official social approval of their lifestyle. But this is the antithesis of equal rights.
If you have a right to someone else's approval, then they do not have a right to their own opinions and values. You cannot say that what "consenting adults" do in private is nobody else's business and then turn around and say that others are bound to put their seal of approval on it.
The rhetoric of "equal rights" has become the road to special privilege for all sorts of groups, so perhaps it was inevitable that gay activists would take that road as well. It has worked. They have already succeeded in getting far more government money for AIDS than for other diseases that kill far more people.
The time is long overdue to stop word games about equal rights from leading to special privileges -- for anybody -- and gay marriage is as good an issue on which to do so as anything else.
Incidentally, it is not even clear how many homosexuals actually want marriage, even though gay activists are pushing it.
What the activists really want is the stamp of acceptance on homosexuality, as a means of spreading that lifestyle, which has become a death style in the era of AIDS.

As an "activist" i can tell you i don't give a damn about their approval. nor should anyone else. i care about being allowed to engage in a government-recognized relationship with another person, because without that recognition i can't sit by their bed as we celebrate our deathstyle. By the way, more straight people die from aids than gay people. is straightness a deathstyle? discuss! convert!
and by the way, mr. sowell, i don't want to "convert" children. they're too sticky. disgusting how that works. but i can understand why the mind of a pedophile such as you would be concerned about this. why do you seek approval for your deathstyle?