My question is: Why get married? Unless you want to share benefits, but fewer and fewer companies are providing benefits (except at very high cost) to 'mates'. Or you have some superstitious need for it. I think that Civil Union ought to be universal, in some restricted form such as "one person to one person", same legal protection that married couples receive.

Why have civil unions if they are the same thing as a marriage?

Marriage is meant to be about two people who love each other making it a commitment. In no way is it a religious custom.

bugseyeview:

I think that marriage shouldn't mean a damned thing legally it should remain 'churchy'. If people want legal protection they should have to 'register' with a civil union. THAT would keep a clear line between church/state. (But I don't run the Universe. Yet)

Which would mean that atheists can't get married.

What you are proposing is to make something non-religious the monopoly of the religious, getting rid of religious privilege is one of the most important things that needs to be done and adding a new one is not the way to go about that.

bugseyeview:

Plural marriage makes me queasy in a social sense, but not a legal one. One rich guy sucking up all of the nubile young women. Women marry to gain status, and money=status, men marry for reproductive potential, meaning young, nubile and physically pleasing.? Lots of testosterone soaked young men with no where to 'put it', and no hope of ever having a women of their own. Powderkeg.

There is a correlation with increased crime rate when polygyny occurs.

In societies in which women can't support themselves (and therefore have to rely on a husband) sharing a rich guy with multiple other wives will often result in more resources than exclusivity with the poor guy. Allowing women to make a living on their own seems to reduce acceptance of the practice.

bugseyeview:

I've read some articles about China's policy of one child being a real problem in the future... Girl babies are aborted, killed, left by the road-side. Boy children, are valued, so guess what has happened? We'll see in about 10 years... Fewer girls could mean plural marriage, but like nothing the bible has seen! Heheheh!

Probably not, though there will be a lot of competition among males for a wife to the point at which they'll accept almost anything. Some countries have already been having the dowries paid by the groom's family to the bride's family because of the shortage of human females.

Interestingly if sex selection became big in the west there would probably be an oversupply of girls although I doubt women raised in western societies would really want to marry into one of the ones with a shortage of girls.

For example, everyone is well aware of the plural marriages of the 'old testament' gentlemen (strictly one way in the Bible). No injunction whatever. In fact, there seemed to be (on my reading) a tacit, if not absolute approval of same.

So why not plural marriage too (if gay marriage is so good for the country)? Don't you think that those 'outlaw' Mormon sects feel a little disenfranchised as well? Living outside the law, performing illegal acts...

If a religion uses the bible, and the bible accepts (thus approves of) plural marriage, then it should be A-OK to have plural marriage by the churches, if that who 'governs' it. But it is not....

It is disallowed by Rule of Law. So much for non interference in Church by State.

My question is: Why get married? Unless you want to share benefits, but fewer and fewer companies are providing benefits (except at very high cost) to 'mates'. Or you have some superstitious need for it. I think that Civil Union ought to be universal, in some restricted form such as "one person to one person", same legal protection that married couples receive.

I think that marriage shouldn't mean a damned thing legally it should remain 'churchy'. If people want legal protection they should have to 'register' with a civil union. THAT would keep a clear line between church/state. (But I don't run the Universe. Yet)

Plural marriage makes me queasy in a social sense, but not a legal one. One rich guy sucking up all of the nubile young women. Women marry to gain status, and money=status, men marry for reproductive potential, meaning young, nubile and physically pleasing.? Lots of testosterone soaked young men with no where to 'put it', and no hope of ever having a women of their own. Powderkeg.

I've read some articles about China's policy of one child being a real problem in the future... Girl babies are aborted, killed, left by the road-side. Boy children, are valued, so guess what has happened? We'll see in about 10 years... Fewer girls could mean plural marriage, but like nothing the bible has seen! Heheheh!

As for the real reason, I wouldn't be surprised if part of it is that some religions just need a group to hate.

I've long suspected the REAL reason for the hysterical opposition to gay marriage is the desire to uphold male supremacy. A same-sex marriage is inherently an equal marriage (any inequalities are clearly due to individual differences, not the institution.) Male Conservatives are afraid that if straight women see equal marriages existing, they may get funny ideas that their own marriages could/should be equal also.

"The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed the first three lawsuits today in a planned statewide challenge of a recent judicial declaration stating that marriages are invalid if presided over by a minister who does not regularly serve a church or preach in a physical house of worship. The ruling potentially endangers thousands of marriages in Pennsylvania.

“What we want is to fix a problem that never should have existed in the first place,” said Mary Catherine Roper, staff attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “The state has no business invalidating marriages just because it doesn’t like the kind of minister who officiated them.”

http://www.aclu.org/religion/gen/34120prs20080214.html

So, I've discovered that a lot of people can't seem to wrap their heads around the concept of interfaith marriages actually happening.

Interfaith marriages do have a higher failure rate but that doesn't stop them happening (and many of the people in them do figure out how to make them work, somehow).

Alex Weaver:

goyo:

And even the reason that people oppose this union, namely, that gay people can't have children, is solved by adoption.

That's not the real reason ANYONE opposes sex-neutral marriage laws.

I agree (although many of the people who oppose gay marriage are consider a coathanger the only legitimate means of birth control so the inability of gays to have children may be a part of it) although it should come as no surprise that the people against gay-marriage also tend to be against allowing gays to adopt (some of them would ban IVF and have heterosexual Christian parents do all the adopting).

Other than that, the Judge's Quote thing is really interesting; if you replace "races" with "genders" and "different continents" with something body related you will be unable to distinguish it from modern day anti-gay arguments. I think that a parallel comparing old anti interracial rhetoric with modern anti gay marriage rhetoric would make a terrific post.