After reading another letter to the editor in our college newspaper defending California's proposition 8, discussing how gays have the same rights as we do because they can also marry people of the opposite sex, it occurred to me that common sense was not in high supply for these folks. So, rather than use empathy to explain how they wouldn't be very happy with that argument if the shoe was on the other foot, another approach occurred to me: show where their silly argument breaks down—not for gays, but for women (or men).

Men are allowed to marry women, but women aren't. Women are allowed to marry men, but men aren't. That sounds like gender discrimination to me. Does this argument stand a chance of breaking through that dense wall of willful ignorance?