The Birds and the Birds

Conversations with hypothetical offspring of my little sister:

"Auntie Shinobi, What's The Gay?"

"Well sweety, when two boys or two girls love eachother very much they move in together, decorate their new apartment and buy dogs. That's The Gay."

"Do they get Married?"

"No, they can't get married because the adults are afraid of them."

"Oh, Can I pet their doggies?"

Try as hard as I can, I still don't understand why people want to ban gay marriage. I am trying to give the other side the benefit of the doubt and find a reason not based on bigotry and I can't think of one. Is there some kind of economic benefit we gain by preventing more people from marrying? If so, why do we not do away with straight marriage as well? If we are so concerned with the sanctity of marriage then we shouldn't we be doing away with things like divorce, and the entire city of Las Vegas?

I read this really well thought out article by Eugene Volokh. And he points out a lot of the flaws in the Nebraska ruling and depressed me even further with the realization that it probably wont stand up to scrutiny. So in order to comfort myself I decided to try and rationalize why 70% of the members of the voting population of Nebraska want to prevent gay marriage in the hopes that I could convince myself to agree with them. And though I have tried, I cannot. Can someone explain it to me?