Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?

Ryan, I swear you are being intentionally obtuse here.

I really fail to see where I am all over the board, when it is your posts that contain more gambits than a chess tournament. Honestly!

I am not sentimental about FDR or the New Deal... any more than you are about the Reagan years, and for exactly the same reasons, too! Let's look this over...

FDR spent far more in government expenditures than he was getting in, right? That is the textbook definition of "deficit spending", right? Well, guess what? So did Reagan! Reagan recognized that the Fed needed to spend more to make more, and it is that ability to utilize Keynesian economic planning that allows Reagan-worshipers like YOU to say, proudly and loudly, that Reagan doubled (more than, actually) government revenue in less than 6 years by CUTTING taxes. Yes, he cut taxes... but he didn't cut spending overall, did he? No, he increased it in areas that he felt the nation as a whole could benefit from while cutting spending in areas he felt were particularly wasteful or potentially useless (no sarcasm intended... Reagan had it out for the Department of Education in particular, and that is a fact). THAT is the kind of "fiscal responsibility" that I feel both FDR and Reagan brought to the table. I'm willing to admit that FDR went too far (something both Ryan and the US Supreme Court agree with me on) in many areas, but the facts remain... these policies of deficit spending and lower taxes in a down economy followed by a balanced budget and-or higher taxes in an up economy (just to get the books back into the black, mind you... I'm not a fan of government surplus spending AT ALL) are the principles that brought our nation out of their respective depression-recession economies and into "boom times".

Since when have I advocated spending simply for spending's sake? At no point did you hear me say that money was "going out of style" so we may as well spend all we can while its still cool... yet that seems to be what you are suggesting I am doing every time this topic comes to light. Were that the case, wouldn't I be the biggest Obama supporter since MSNBC?

You wrote: "...your argument thus far was that the government had zero Constitutional authority to regulate marriage at all. "

My argument was never that government had no right to regulate marriage, it was that government had no right to regulate morality.

Governmental regulation of marriage already exists in the determined age of consent, laws against polygamy, bigamy, spousal abuse and-or abandonment, et al. What doesn't exist is a clearly defined Constitutional wording for what constitutes a marriage. Thus, I see, read, and hear the conservative movement attempting to use such Constitutional phrasing as "intent" or "historical context" or "traditional lifestyles" in their arguments against same-sex marriage... but it is exactly THESE non-literal interpretations of the Constitution and the second-guessing of the Framer's intent that push such conservatives over the edge and into insanity when discussing OTHER individual rights questions like gun ownership, or excessive taxation, or lack of representation. You can't have both... and frankly, I have no problem with "my" brand of conservatism allowing the individual States the Right to define marriage as they see fit and to provide for the protection of that institution in whatever ways works best for them. Anything else from the Feds, short of a Constitutional Amendment (which I simply DO NOT see happening), will do anything but make the conservative movement look hypocritical.

Let me put it this way... what grounds do you feel are there to deny gay marriage? Why should gay couples not get the same benefits in tax deductions and health insurance premiums as straight couples, if everything is equal?

I'm not defending the gay lifestyle here... I'm simply asking why it is okay for the Fed to say who can and can't get married, but it isn't okay for the Fed to discriminate based on sexual orientation in any other area of operation without violating someone's civil rights? Is it because the majority of people think that gay marriage is wrong? There has been no national referendum on the question, so I wonder where the determination is made. Is it because it goes against Judeo-Christian tradition? So does work on Sunday... but no one is crying about that. So does no prayer in school-work-public... but that isn't going to be overturned anytime soon, either.

Whose rights are being violated by allowing same-sex marriages in one form or another? Or by simply allowing them the same access to tax breaks and insurance coverage discounts as anyone else? As long as the opportunity is denied to gay couples, the calls of "discrimination" and "second class citizen" will forever ring out, and not simply from the fringe elements, either.