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Less than a week from today, Californians will vote on Proposition 8, which seeks to recriminalize gay marriage after months of it being legal. Although this is a highly charged topic on both sides, it's important to have a calm, reasoned discussion on gay marriage.

Gay marriage needs to remain legal in California. To begin with, let's look at the arguments against gay marriage and Prop 8 and discover why they're all wrong.

1. Marriage is meant to foster families, specifically children. Since homosexuals can't produce offspring, they can't get married.

It's true that marriage provides a stable framework upon which to start a family, but having children has never been a requirement or requisite for marriage. If marriage were conditioned on bearing children, then we wouldn't allow infertile couples to marry, nor those who did not wish for children. Children are often a component of marriage, but they are not, and never have been, a requirement for it.

2. Homosexuality is unhealthy and unnatural: it's a sickness and disorder, not something to be celebrated.

This argument is based more upon bigotry and ignorance than anything else. Humans often fear or frown upon those who are different, but it doesn't make this point valid.

As far as being unnatural goes, we are often told that only humans exhibit this type of behavior; this is not true. Many animal species have been observed engaging in homosexual behavior. However, regardless of whether animals behave homosexually or not, since when do we evaluate human behavior based upon our animal counterparts? Chimpanzees masturbate and throw feces in public; needless to say, that would not be accepted with humans.

It is also often assumed that homosexuality is unhealthy as well. This is equally inaccurate. The vast majority of studies demonstrate that homosexuality is not any more or less healthy than heterosexuality.

3. Homosexuals are nothing more than malcontents choosing to rebel against our values: why should they be rewarded?

Homosexuality is not a choice. What motive would someone have for wanting to be discriminated against and hated by some? Although it is less so than it used to be, gays are still often looked down upon by others. Does it really make sense that a person would want to be treated like a second-class citizen for pretending to be something s/he's not? This point becomes even more valid in highly intolerant societies, where gays are regularly downtrodden, threatened, and even killed. Take Iran, for example,

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