At age 83, my grandmother an 82-year-old man. Under your standard, her marriage should have been prevented.
Marriage exists to ensure the continuation of the human race.
Bull. Since when does pregnancy require marriage? If you want to get REALLY traditional about it, marriage was an early property management system. I prefer an approach that recognizes marriage as a partnership between two committed, loving adults. I hear that also contributes to social stability and the general well-being of the partners.
kids who are raised without both a mother and father are far worse off. Society has an interest in ensuring that stable male-female relationships are maintained for the betterment of our future generations.
I hope that the thousands of childless couples are properly grateful to you for overlooking their audacious failure to procreate. Do you keep track of those who aren't?
No, but another nice strawman. You badly miss the point. Marriage's central purpose is not to mandate procreation but to ameliorate its consequences. Your grandmother and grandfather still fulfilled the basic criteria for marriage, a man and a female. Only a male and a female can come together to form another human being. This is what marriage was structured to protect.
Bull. Since when does pregnancy require marriage? If you want to get REALLY traditional about it, marriage was an early property management system. I prefer an approach that recognizes marriage as a partnership between two committed, loving adults. I hear that also contributes to social stability and the general well-being of the partners.
As I previously addressed, you are dead wrong. In any case, I am curious as to why you insist that marriage must remain binary? Isn't that arbitrary?
I hope that the thousands of childless couples are properly grateful to you for overlooking their audacious failure to procreate. Do you keep track of those who aren't?
Already addressed.
You choose a narrow interpretation of the benefit, "mixed-gender marriage." Why impose that limitation over the broader benefit, namely the ability of an individual to marry a loving partner?
Because that "narrow interpretation" is what constitutes a marriage. Marriage was constituted not as a contract between "loving individuals" but as a means to control and channel heterosexual intercourse into a stable structure and thus ensure that children produced as a result of the union would be born into a family with a mother and father.
Moreover, your point is also irrelevant to an equal protection analysis. When the same benefit is offered on the same terms to everyone, it does not matter that some don't like the terms.
But they could if they wanted to, so no harm no foul? I seem to recall some old guy writing about inalienable rights yadda yadda the pursuit of happiness, but I forget where I heard that.
Jefferson said that we were endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. How does that Creator define marriage?
Citation needed. When did YOU choose to become a (presumably) heterosexual? Moreover, if sexuality is a choice, why aren't there more homosexuals? If it's a choice, then it strikes me that it could go either way. Alternatively, given the intense social pressures against it, why are there ANY homosexuals in fundamentalist religious communities?
I am curious as to why individuals of your ilk always retreat to a set of talking points. Do you know how many times I have heard the "When did YOU choose to become a heterosexual" line?
The simple answer? We are all created heterosexual, yet various influences can cause an individual to deviate from that norm.
As for your "citation needed." What do you need a citation too? The fact that ex-homosexuals exist? The fact that sexual behavior is not fixed and inherent?
I can give you citations to both.