To start off, let me begin by saying that I am FOR same sex marriage and my personal belief is not based on anything but my gut instinct.

That said, let's examine the facts behind the issue:

First and foremost, we have to remember that what we are talking about here is whether or not couples of the same sex can go to COURT to apply and receive a Marriage License. What we are NOT talking about is whether or not couples of the same sex can go to a CHURCH or other religious sanctuary to receive a Marriage Ceremony along with their License.

Many of you on the other side of this debate don't see a difference there and, I believe, this is where the debate truly exists. Is America a nation with a clear separation of Church and State? Is it "One Nation Under God"? Can it be both?

My belief is yes, it can be both. To me, "One Nation Under God" asserts a basic belief in a higher being but goes into no further specification. It asserts spirituality, not religion. It is inclusive and not exclusive. Finally, it asserts that we are ALL God's creatures and, as such, we ALL have equal rights.

Not too long ago, good, God-fearing people classified African-Americans as outside the laws of equality. They rationalized it through the manipulation of religious and scientific thought. After slavery was abolished, the most that was allowed was segregation. Blacks had "everything" that whites had but it was all separate and apart. This debate is much of the same and I'm confident that we will make it through this.

As an aside, I'm basing my argument on America's specific situation. There are countries that do NOT have separation of church and state and classify themselves as belonging to a specific religion. In their case, this argument needs to be made from a different point of view as many of my statements don't apply.

The argument that more suffering has been caused by religion than by anything else is a bit of a stretch. Looking back at history, there are two main reasons why humans have waged wars. One is territory and the other is ideology. Within ideology, of course, lies religion but it is accompanied by such things as racism, elitism and the like.

Nevertheless, I'd still have to say that, in this day and age, we'd be better off without religion. Before, I continue, however, I'd like to point out that it is religion that I deem unnecessary, not spirituality.

Throughout history, religion has served as a general guide in our lives and faith has served as a filler for the things we do not know. It was either Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, both geniuses as far as physics and astronomy were concerned, who saw god in nature, a subject which they understood but little.

Nowadays, rational thought, philosophy and society itself have come far enough along that religion is more of a crutch than the boon it once was. Belief in something spiritual is still something crucial in man's life as it has a humbling and grounding effect but religion just pigeonholes us into an aged mindset.

As straightforward as this question is, it's very multi-layered since Microsoft is in so many different fields of business.

As far as Windows itself, the OS tries to be too many things to too many people and, in the end, ends up sucking in comparison to its competition. Microsoft is forced to design its OS without prior knowledge of the hardware configurations it will run in or the software it will control. On one side of the coin, Apple creates its own software and hardware and can, therefore, design the one to run smoothly with the other. On the other, the various Linux distributions can be so extensively modified that it doesn't really matter what configuration you have. Add to that Microsoft's insistence on backwards compatibility (which just increases the amount of configurations Windows needs to be able to run on) and you have a recipe for disaster.

In its other areas of business, Microsoft remains a necessary evil. Time and again, consumers are forced to buy Microsoft's products because they are cheaper (most times) and more widely used instead of because they are the best on the market. As an example, look at Microsoft's Office Suite: before Office 7 came out, people complained that the Productivity Suite was bloated and lacking many common features. When Microsoft investigated, it found that many of the features people requested had already been implemented but the program was so unwieldy that no one could find them. By then, people had already started turning to OpenOffice and Google's online offerings.

All in all, Microsoft, as a company, has focused on getting its eggs into as many baskets as they possibly could. They are never the worst, but they are never the best. They are just ubiquitous. This style of business serves to lower our expectations and decrease the overall quality of the marketplace. In this way, Microsoft is like the Ford and IBM of old.

(damn that was a lot of writing)