What the old mother-father marriages are now competing against is these newfangled pasted-together me-too “families.”
With society as badly fractured as it is, maybe it follows reality more closely for secular government to recognize households rather than marriages. Maybe marriages should be kept within the auspices of houses of religious worship. Maybe. One virtue of that is that churches, rather than governments, would be charged with such questions as what is “cheating too bad” to be married.
A "contractual household" could serve many needs, if the contracts were enforced. This would be a big improvement over the present legal status of marriage, which is a "relationship at will."
With society as badly fractured as it is, maybe it follows reality more closely for secular government to recognize households rather than marriages.
...whatever families end up being called, it won’t change the basic, and really the only reason, supporting same sex marriage...estate tax law...
...the vigorous push to recognize same sex marriage was launched by ‘partners’ who considered themselves entitled to their significant other’s assets at death, in complete contravention to traditional tax law...so they worked to develop a mechanism to make the law work for them, without having to pay an onerous estate tax burden...
...et voila! Same sex spouses, spouses who could inherit assets free of tax consequence...mere civil unions could no no such thing, it had to be a marriage...thanks to state governments infringing on private estate settlements, and establishing a hierarchy of tax burden, based on familial relationship...
...pure, unadulterated greed, both by government and private citizen, has led us down this primrose path, whereby we see lechery elevated to routine status...