is a celibate man any less "controlled by his groin" is choosing a mate than a promiscuous one?
as i alluded to in another post, i'm not sure this is the case. it would seem to take a deep love to propel someone into a life long committment when they are already 'getting the milk for free'. the problem i see is that too many people will just choose to stay single for their whole life.
i don't think marriage was invented to make people sexually moral. it was created to make them responsible for their sexual actions.
I'd say the purpose is much more specific: to protect the right of all people--other than those who by their own actions forfeit the right--to know who their offspring are.
Of course, women don't need to have that right protected--biologically a woman who's pregnant can pretty well guess the child is hers.
Men, however, have no such inherent biological assurance. By requiring that their wives be virgins when they wed, and that they have sex with no one else, husbands can get the assurance from society that biology alone would not provide.
Note, btw, that the focus of marriage on protecting the right to know one's offspring is why female virginity is prized and adultery (for a married woman to sleep with a man not her husband) is not tolerated; it's also why polygyny is acceptable but polyandry is not, and why fornication--even by married males--is not forbidden but is discouraged (a man who sleeps around may find children emerging who grow up to claim a share of his inheritance; the unwise action thus produces its own punishment).
First, you have to buy into the idea that a man IS controlled by his groin. Most here apparently have or are, judging by the responses. Feminists have been trying to "dumb down" men for the last 40 years or so. Look at how men are portrayed in commercials and on TV. Dim-witted, blithering idiots that can only be saved from their sheer stupidity by the 'empowered" woman, the logical, brainy, has-it-all-together, "smart" one. It naturally follows then, that men are creatures who only operate on instinct, and their sexual drive is the most poweful force in the universe to them. That's what Feminists think, and they apparently have succeeded in getting men to think of themselves that way, too.
Real men aren't that way. A real man controls his sexual urges, they don't control him. A real man has self-control. A real man doesn't screw every woman in sight, even if he can and has the opportunity. A real man has respect for himself, respect for women, and respect for morality. Men are not what Feminists define them as, they are what God defines them as. A real man loves and respects God, His Word, and lives by it.