Thanks!
If society blesses "civil unions" won't that take away the second half of the objection? And since society doesn't have any problem blessing the marriage of people who have no intention of procreation - even intentionally sterile couples, doesn't that take away the first half of the objection?
I'm not trying to pick nits. Do you approve of civil unions but not marriage? Are you speaking for yourself?
Shalom.
I'm supposing that in the early years when villages were small and distant, and marriages were arranged, or at least planned when there were only few boys and girls of proximate age available to be joined at any particular time, the purpose was to keep the tribe going. Religion was the set of civil laws (separate from the physical laws) that kept rule and order in place for fear of a higher punishment. Marriage was a way of designating that a woman was "off limits" to others if an ordered society was to exist and sustain.
Today's concept of homosexual marriage arose (again in my opinion) from workplace discrimination and harrassment laws. The argument at the time was that heterosexual couples could freely discuss their weekend activities, such as when taking children to sports events and parties, while gay workers were not similarly free to discuss their activites (perhaps they were even still "in the closet" at the time). Heterosexual couples could discuss going out with their wives/husbands, have family pictures on their desks, etc., while gay couples did not feel similarly free to express their own social arrangements. In fact, heterosexual displays of their familial arrangements were (and are still) so much the norm that they don't even feel that what they do is an overt expression of their sexuality, even though their sexuality is implied by their displays of family. Gays were simply asking for the same ability to express their familial arrangements as commonly, and as taken for granted, as heterosexuals do.
The idea that what they have is "marriage" is an attempt to equivalize their relationship with heterosexuals, when history is against that concept. Perhaps the answer is to decouple religious marriage from civil unions and require that all couples appear before a judge to obtain a civil union regardless of religious marital status, in other words, no longer make legal a church marriage. People of religious faith would still have their church/synagogue weddings, but would also have to separately seek a civil union in order to obtain legal status.
-PJ