A friend asked me to explain why conservatives and Christians oppose gay marriage. This is my response (I led into the discussion by asking how she felt about illegal immigration and illegal aliens):
On immigration -- No, I can't blame anybody either. They're following the money, and the lifestyle. Before he became President, G. W. Bush said (paraphrased) "If someone is willing to swim a river and cross a desert to get here, that's someone I want working in Texas." I have alot of respect for those people, actually. But the fact is they're breaking the law. Besides that, it's a mutually abusive system -- they abuse our laws and make it rich while employers abuse them and make it rich. We have laws about how employers must treat workers, and yet the businesspeople and the politicians who cater to them are willing to look the other way so we can have cheap labor and cheap products. Once you start breaking the law, the corruption just spreads.
But consider the citizenship issue. You said you're against breaking the law, and you don't think it's fair that they get benefits and handouts just because they're here, even though they're not citizens (I'm adding to what you said, but this sounds like where you were heading). They're getting the benefits of citizenship without meeting the legal or realistic definition.
What does citizenship mean? What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States? It means you can vote, you get services, you're not going to be thrown out, etc. There are advantages to being a citizen. But what does US citizenship mean if we were to declare everybody in Mexico, or everybody in the world, a US citizen? If everybody is declared a citizen, or even if everybody gets the same benefits as citizens without being citizens, then what does the word "citizen" really mean? It doesn't mean anything anymore. You might as well not be a citizen.
And this leads into the marriage question.
First off, there's not a single civilization anywhere that has ever recognized marriage between same sex couples. In fact, in almost every society homosexuality has been frowned upon and even considered illegal. Homosexuality was considered illegal in the US until just the last few decades -- it was a punishable criminal offense in some states when you and I were in high school! And the American Psychological Association considered it a form of mental illness and sexual deviancy up until after we graduated too (pretty sure on that -- not 100% certain). I don't think this is a sign of "progress" and modernity, so much as it is a breaking down of moral standards and their replacement by anything goes, I'm okay, you're okay fuzzy thinking and political correctness. It's not a sign of moral progress on the level of, say, the ending of slavery or segregation. Many blacks are grossly offended that their civil rights struggle is being used to promote the gay marriage agenda. In fact, it was black men and women who voted for Obama who put the California anti-gay-marriage initiative over the top in November. Ironically, the Democrat get-out-the-vote effort is what made Proposition 8 pass!
Gays will talk about how homosexuality was rampant in Greek and Roman culture, and maybe elsewhere, but even in Greek and Roman culture gay people were actually looked down upon (even gay emperors were made fun of) and the behavior may have been tolerated, but never officially recognized as okay (somewhat like where we are today in the US).
So, besides homosexuality being condemned in the Bible, it's not necessary to break out the Bible to show how being gay has not been approved of through history, because even pagan cultures opposed it. I'm not going to base my position on the Bible much, though to clarify God's definition of inappropriate sexual behavior extends to any sex outside of a male-female marriage, including pre-marital sex and affairs. I think the Christian position against homosexuality gets too much attention and focus, perhaps because affairs are so socially acceptable these days and the church doesn't want to touch it.
Secondly, consider the definition of marriage. Marriage, by any definition in any culture, has always meant a man and a woman. Man-woman couples have always been eligible for special tax breaks, for health plans at cheaper rates, for adopting children (adopting into gay couple households is really not fair to the child, because it confuses the kids and those kids lack balanced role models), etc. Plus, you can inherit money and legally it's considered a special relationship.
Just like illegal aliens, gays do not meet the "definition" of marriage, but they want the same rights and benefits as married male-female couples. They want to adopt kids, they want to get tax breaks, they want to have special benefits at work, such as the medical plans meant for families (at tremendous cost to the businesses -- there was a gay-rights organization that proposed to extend their medical plans to gay couples, and then shortly after they revoked it because they couldn't afford it!). I've actually seen and heard cohabiting male-female couples say "Hey, that's not fair -- we don't get those benefits, and yet gay couples do?"
Most homosexuals, when asked, say they don't really want to get married -- they just want to live with each other, just like most male-female couples do (and there's nothing stopping them, by existing law -- happens all the time). What they really WANT from the legalization of gay marriage is public acceptance and official acknowledgement of their behavior as "normal" and positive. They want gay sex to be "normal and positive" in the same way that men and women who have affairs want that to be considered "normal and positive" -- so they can avoid feelings of guilt, and feel like everybody else is doing it, why not me.
And, in countries where gay marriage is practiced, we've seen this is so -- people don't get married. A significant number of gays get married, but certainly not a huge proportion of the gay population. So most gays don't get married, even after legalization. However, what starts to happen is that men and women don't get married either! There's no point. Living together is just as good, and has fewer consequences, in their eyes, because there's nothing special about marriage. I have a friend from the Netherlands, and her wedding here in the US was the first wedding she'd ever been to in her life! She was 25 or so, and none of her friends, and none of the adults in her life, had ever had a wedding in those 25 years.
Thirdly, of course, homosexual marriage does not meet the spiritual definition of marriage under Christian rules (or the rules of most other religions). God does not approve of anything other than a male-female bonding. He doesn't bless those couples, because they're not living according to the social rules He carefully set up. To me, and many people, a marriage is less a legal status than it is a spiritual bonding, meant to be something special and blessed by God.
Beyond all this, there are actual court cases brought by other "deviant" groups who are now seeking legal recognition for them to get married, or at least not to be prosecuted because they argue if the standard is no longer a man and a woman legally having sex or legally getting married, then they should be allowed to legally have sex their way or get married their way, too. These groups want to use the breakdown of traditional marriage and traditional sex to force society to accept polygamy, bestiality (one man sued because he wanted to marry his dog, or something), and even sex with children (there's a group called NAMBLA -- the Man Boy Love Association -- which seeks legal recognition for a 40 year old man to have sex with a 6 year old boy).
On the one hand, redefining marriage to mean any kind of marriage breaks down the understanding of what "marriage" means, and makes the act of marriage pointless and meaningless. On the second hand, if we drop the historical, thousands-of-years-old standard of male-female marriage, then the sky's the limit as far as what becomes acceptable. If male-female is no longer the standard, what new, arbitrary definition of where to draw the line between "can marry" and "can't marry" should we set? What CAN we set, because once that firm definition goes away, there really are no moral boundaries left that will stand up to scrutiny.
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