We don't extend marriage privileges because people have relationships. We extend them because some relationships are biologically, morally, and economically likely to produce healthy, well-adjusted children; these children are our very future, and it is they who will maintain our nation's vitality.
After my grandmother died, my grandfather remarried at the age of 90, to an 87-year-old woman. Are you seriously suggesting that 'we' extended them 'marriage privileges' because 'we' thought they were 'likely' to produce children?
Are you suggesting that mutually infertile opposite-sex couples aren't really married or aren't deserving of 'marriage privileges'?
Making Christian citizens agree to support the redefinition of marriage (by demanding their stamp of approval in the form of marriage licenses) could bring down the Republic.
Civil marriage doesn't confer the blessing of any citizen, Christian or otherwise. On the other hand, limiting the legal definition of marriage to what Christians approve (if that's what you're defending) sure looks like a First Amendment problem to me.
Before artificial insemination, test-tube babies, and cloning, the set of humans who can reproduce only included pairs of unique males individually combined with unique females. The strict set that could reliably bear children is "usually" between 16 and 45. Because true intent was private, neither church nor state would ever ask what they planned to do with bearing children. Because marriage was traditionally for life, the old age of the couples was never a consideration.
This is about life. It's not a game. This is either God's hand in the process of bringing life into the world, or it's evolution in progress. The state has no business getting in the way of either; it doesn't matter how you see the cosmos, human children are the intent of state-licensed marriages.
On the other hand, limiting the legal definition of marriage to what Christians approve (if that's what you're defending) sure looks like a First Amendment problem to me.
It's OK to question the Christian aspect, but science is science. Without reproduction, the state ceases to exist. The ironic thing is that most same-sex "partners" are likely to believe in evolution. There is no evolutionary benefit to the species for supporting "friends" pairing up away from their potential mating partners and knitting sox together. Darwin would be amused to hear that some species was paying rewards to its couples not to reproduce.