“It’s always been an obligation, intended to be undertaken by a male and a female prior to engaging in behavior which might be reasonably expected to produce children.”
Actually, the history of marriage was more of a business deal to secure fortunes or raise status.
Even in the Bible, many of the Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives and concubines.
And if producing children is what defines marriage, then anyone too old to bear children should be prohibited from getting married and if a couple does not produce children within, say 2 years of getting married, they must divorce.
99.9% of all the people who ever lived have generally been dirt-poor, with no fortune or status to be improved by a business marriage.
Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives and concubines of the female persuasion.
"Producing children" is not what defines marriage. Creating an environment most likely to lead to healthy, competent adults is what defines marriage.
Welcome to FR. Your short posting history shows your sole interest to be the promotion of "homosexual marriage". Do you have any other interests?
Ah, so men and women didn't fall in love in, say, 3000 B.C. They had a fundamentally different nature than us enlightened folk in 2008 who mystically evolved the ability to fall in love with each other in the time since then. Nah, back then marriage was all about contracts and cattle and land ownership...and that's why slaves never got married, doncha know.
This isn't the "history" of marriage...it is some modern theorists' silly projection on the history of marriage. And judging by the argument, a person who a) didn't like the institution very much and b) believed this Marxist twaddle that everything's about money.