Jason: We could very…
We could very easily say that these gay people did own property, …
Right; because property has a well-defined meaning outside of the context of government recognition of property rights. (It’d have to, for libertarian claims such as “taxation is theft” to even be comprehensible.) Are you suggesting that, analogically, gay people are already getting married (thus that gay marriage already exists), and that the only political question remaining is whether government will recognize those already-existing marriages?
This is the situation with marriage: It is an individual institution, made by, for, and about indviduals. And it should enjoy the protection of the government for exactly that reason, since government exists to protect the individual and to permit him the pursuit of happiness, free from the interference of others.
So your complaint is that certain third parties (viz. government officials) aren’t required to recognize gay marriages?
Anticopyright.