The law can change, it has before. Whether is should change in the most fundamental way possible is another.

This is not a method of breaking the contract or giving one partner a more distinct legal identity – this is changing what marriage is FOR.

I perhaps would not necessarily mind the change if people would confess what it is they want to do. They seem to feign or even possess ignorance of it’s point and purpose.

Which should be obvious but apparently is obscured in talk of setting up household with someone you like.

Marriage is about constraining reproduction; in a state of nature men and women make children and civilization depends upon constraining this reality and its effect. Marriage law protects property and ordered liberty by channeling it into a one legal form ideal for transfer of property, management of human relationships giving priority to unnatural monogamy. THe law whuniversally protects against other types of unions being acceptable (polyamory, polygamy, incest, etc).

I love how they assume that the argument against gay marriage must be only reglious or bigoted. That there is no societal compeling reason other than those.

melle1228 on February 23, 2013 at 2:03 PM

Even something as basic as “Could there possibly be a reason which transcends my culture and my pweshus feewings that monogamous, heterosexual pairings have been the ‘right way’ for every civilized culture worthy of the name (and even a good many that weren’t) since art consisted of cave paintings?”

It is a frightening state of affairs when a bongo-thumping tribal who paid his bride’s dowry in goats knows better than to meddle with a pillar of organized life than many ‘civilized’ people…and would reach for his spear if said liberal spouted off about how glorious at-will abortion was within his hearing.

“Marriages don’t belong to the “partners” alone – It’s a three way with the state (society and government). It’s a public contract obligating its participants to each other and society for a particular point and purpose – to manage the natural biological consequences of male female relationships in a way that preserves property/ordered liberty and a stable, less violent society.”

SarahW on February 23, 2013 at 2:01 PM

Then society and the government get to define the terms of that public contract and can change them as they like. You can’t invite the government into a social or religious institution and not expect it to have absolute power over that institution.

The marriage issue, more than probably anything else, demonstrates how short-sighted social “conservatives” are. They missed their best, and only, chance at “preserving marriage” many years ago when they decided the government should play a role in the regulation of marriage, based in part on the kind of reasoning you articulated in your post. Tough beans, I say.

It is to protect women by law from abandonment of themselves and children. It is to encourage recognition of legitimate heirs of the male and his primary responsibility to their support to promote his wife’s fidelity to himself.

It’s recognition, obligations and protections are to discourage what comes naturally OUTSIDE of marriage, to discourage fatherless children so that the larger society doesn’t have to support them or deal with the sociological consequences of neglected, malnourishes, malsocialized, uneducated and undisciplined children – crime, imbecilism, and sexually transmitted diseases that cause infirmity.

Marriage calls for limits that don’t come naturally. It rewards the sacrifice with rights, sets it above other relationships;

Suddenly, constraining procreation is supposed to have nothing to do with it.
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Gay marriage is not designed to constrain or promote sexual behaviout that makes children. And to call it equal removes the recognition of that purpose in heterosexual marriage, and confuses marriage for an emotional attachment residing at one address for as long as the partners feel like it.

Yeh after Obamacare I don’t think we can take the ‘leave your hands off my body’ crowd seriously.

CW on February 23, 2013 at 1:23 PM

Exactly. Get your splinter-group of society the hell off my religion and then we can talk about “your hands off my body”. We are already having do discuss serious measures to keep from becoming Canadians.

most journalists have a problem with religionists telling people what they can and cannot do.

Hypocrites, spontaneously combust then – leave my guns alone. I love the 1st and the 2nd, and I’ll protect them.