Originally Posted by Prince

A child can answer "yes" if you ask them if they want candy. They know what candy is, they know it tastes good, and so they want to eat it. A pre-adolescent or adolescent child has not reached sexual maturity. That does not happen until around 17 or 18 years of age on the average.

You cannot ask a 12-year-old to give consent on matters which they cannot understand due to incomplete cognitive, physical, psychological, and psychosexual development. Therefore engaging in a sexual act with a child, whose body doesn't even produce the hormones required for sexual desire to begin with, is rape regardless of whether the child was a willing participant, because the psychological capacity to give that consent is not there. You cannot give consent to what you don't understand. The same applies to animals - a man having intercourse with an animal is in fact raping it. Just because the animal isn't resisting it, doesn't constitute as consent - it means the animal is incapable of consent.

Two adult homosexual human beings are perfectly capable of understanding and giving consent to marriage or sexual relations. You have every right to not approve of their marriage, but you have no right to deny them the same basic rights that you take for granted. Of course, it is always much easier to rally for the denial of basic civil rights when you are not the one affected by those legislative changes.