The discussion about interracial marriage occurred in the 1960s, when it was automatically assumed that marriage involved a man and a woman. Men and women can naturally produce children, so the basic rules of marriage were not changed by this. Marriage, in fact, was truly expanded by allowing people of different races to marry.
Marriage is supposed to to be an exclusive institution. You can’t marry someone who is underage. You can’t marry a close relative and you must marry a person of the opposite sex. These rules developed in the interest of allowing society to continue through the next generation of people.
Underage children cannot reproduce and even if older ones can, it is not in our interest for them to do so. How successful can children be in raising children? We have a bit of that in the inner city, and it’s best that people wait a little before they have their own children.
You can’t marry a close relative because of possible genetic problems in the children.
And finally, you marry a person of the opposite sex, because we don’t want to disconnect marriage from procreation. Disconnecting marriage from procreation altogether turns marriage into an institution which revolves around the self-esteem and desires of adults. Children become merely a by-product. Maybe they’re there and maybe they’re not, but it doesn’t matter because marriage will be for and about adults, and children will definitely know this.
Let’s say two lesbians have a boy. The boy eventually learns that he was produced from a sperm and an egg. He learns that his genetic father apparently did not want anything to do with him, and that his mothers disconnected him from half of his relatives for the sake of themselves. Where does that put him in terms of importance?
Do you really believe that the sexes are not different except for obvious physical differences? I’m amazed that this feminist theory has gained any traction because it contradicts experience. Very small boys and girls are different. Parents and teachers know this. If the hypothetical boy’s lesbian mothers divorce and remarry, he’ll then have four mothers and no father. Try telling an inner city minister or teacher that boys don’t need fathers.
We need to get off the subject of civil rights. People will always be producing children. In a highly imperfect world, marriage developed as the most stable way to channel the energies of adults into providing for their offspring and thereby contributing to the stability and vitality of society.
The subject needs to shift from civil rights to civil responsibilities.
Of course your position appears to be logical, the thing I would ask in response is that do you think that restricting the marriage contract will in any way change personal relationships.
In other words, is it your belief that if gays are prohibited from the legal benefits gained through marriage this fact will somehow be translated as a wake up call to abandon their homosexual lifestyle?
I think we both know the answer is that people will continue to be people and interact with each other as they always have, there is nothing new about homosexuality, it has been with since the inception of humans and will remain with our species forever.
So, if I am correct in my assessment, your position regarding restricting marriage simply becomes an act of punishment for a lifestyle between consenting adults that you deem inappropriate without any accompanying social benefit.