an awfully weak institution if it can be demeaned and disparaged that easily.
Yes, it is weak. One reason is easy divorce. Another is social acceptance of illegitimate parents. (There are no illegitimate children, but there certainly are illegitimate parents.) Almost every couple has good years and bad years, and, at present, things are set up so that when the bad year comes, absent strong religious grounding, the parents' interest will trump that of their children. Gay marriage isn't as big a factor in the death of marriage as easy divorce or social acceptance of illegitimacy, but it is one factor.
And, inadvertently, religious people and deliberately "liberals" are personally responsible for 30% illegitimacy among whites and 80% among non-whites in this country.
Both groups continue to vote for politicians who wisht to fund the welfare state which only subsidizes illigetimacy. Both groups do it out of "guilt."
Remember the following economic axiom: the more you subsidize something, the more of it you will get.
Since there are more religious people than liberals, if the religious people would step up to the plate at election time and vote the politicians out of office who wish to continue to fund the welfare state with the hard earn money of the productive part of society, illegitimacy and all of its known and easily identifiable social problems associated with it would disappear.
Just a reminder, prior to 1965, right before the point the welfare state really started to kick in tp gear, illegitmacy was 5% for both white and non-white.