I have no trouble with equal rights.  I do have trouble with redefining the meaning of marriage.  I'd be for civil unions with all appropriate rights.  However, IMHO, if we legalize "gay marriage" we will also have to legalize plural marriages be they polygamy or polyandry

Maybe not at this moment, but you'd better check Mormon theology and Islamic law.  

Allowing "gay people" to marry is not redefining marriage because people are already allowed to get married regardless of their sexual orientation. There is no slippery slope to polygamy or bestiality, or pedophilia, or whatever because the criteria for a person to be eligible for marriage will not change.

Under our current laws you are eligible to enter into a legally binding marriage if you meet 3 qualifications-

1. You are a human being (snapping turtles and coffee tables need not apply)
2. You are of legal age (18 in most states)
3. You are not currently in a legally binding marriage (no polygamy, one marriage at a time)

There are no limitations based on your race, creed, color, physical ability, religion, sexual orientation, or ability to procreate. Because we live in a free society we are free to chose the person we legally marry, as long as we both meet the criteria listed above. Again, this part will not change.

However, there is currently a restriction that prevents two eligible people from choosing each other if they are of the same gender. This is wrong. Denying the freedom to chose based on gender is wrong today just as denying two people based on their race was wrong 50 years ago.

Marriage equality isn't about letting people who were previously not allowed to get married to do so, it's about giving people who are already allowed to get married the freedom to chose each other. That's it.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope

Mormons do not practice poligamy.  There are certrain subcultures within Mormanism that do, but they are small, few and far between, and frowned upon by the Church as a whole.

Up until the 90's certain states still had laws on the books allowing you to legal kill a Morman man on site.  The multiple wives thing wasn't a 'oh gee, I want more wives' and more of a 'help the comunity survive' deal since they were in short supply of men.

Separate, but related question: why no big discussion on Brittney Griner? Arguably she's more recognized than Jason Collins. Where are the discussions, tweets, congrats for her? (Generally, not specific to this board)

Louganis? Isn't it a different conversation when talking about team sports though?

Are you aware that marriage is a state-sanctioned institution?  This has zero to do with what any religious institution pursues.

I can think of a few openly gay or not-hiding-it gay female OU athletes in recent years but no men.

Of course, this is merely one interpretation, albeit a popular one. I do not agree with it.

Very well said, Andrew.  I agree with your every point here.  I would emphasize that in our secular society homosexuals and all other people deserve equal rights before the law.  However, from a biblical point-of-view homosexuality is a sin.  Here I should make clear that it's not having homosexual urges that is the sin, it is acting on those urges.  Though, I suppose, dwelling on those urges could be a sin just as Jesus said a man lusting after a woman could commit adultery with her in his heart.  I will restate that I do not support "gay marriage," but I do support civil unions, with all the rights pertaining to marriage before the law.  I further think that the analogies made between homosexual rights and  civil rights for African Americans and the centuries long struggle to achieve same is often a very strained one.  This is a complicated issue and there are lots of subtle nuisances that are not easily discussed on a sports board.  I believe at this point, I've said all that I want to say on this issue in this venue.  GO OHIO!

Sorry I can't resist.  I must make one very last and absolutely final statement in this thread.  I have read Plessy v. Ferguson.  I've also read a good deal about Albion Tourgée, the Ohioan who was the leading attorney for Homer Plessy. I've also read Tourgée's famous novel, A Fool's Errand, about KKK violence in the South during Reconstruction.  I'm currently reading Tourgée's Invisible Empire, an exposé on the KKK.  I've also read Brown v. Board of Education.  The analogies between the issues in these cases and the question at hand are tenuous at best.  I don't know anyone who advocates civil unions who thinks homosexuals should ride in separate railroad cars, or go to separate schools, or otherwise not mix in with the general society.  

Or, let's look at an even more infamous case related to African American rights -- Dred Scott.  In that case, the chief justice of the US said that African Americans were not U.S. citizens and are "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." I don't know any person on either side of this debate that's saying anything roughly comparable to this in comparing the civil rights of "gays" and "straights." 

OK, I'm done.  This is my very last final post in this thread. 

P.S. An interesting piece of trivia that I learned recently: Abraham Lincoln had a personal valet by the name of William Johnson.  When Johnson died in 1864, Lincoln paid for his burial at what became Arlington National Cemetery and according to some sources (contradicted by others) penned the one word inscription on his tombstone below his name -- "Citizen." You see, Johnson was a black man, and Lincoln would thus be making a political statement against the Dred Scott decision, which was still technically the law of the land.