Perhaps we need to clarify what calling something a marriage is. To even have marriage, gay or otherwise, you have to say that this is something they are doing over and above hooking up and shacking up.
Different groups within society can issue the status of marriage, and they will do so based on their own religious convictions. The Southern Baptist Church will use different criteria from the Metropolitan Community Church.
The fact that we have marriage licenses suggests that the government has an interest in identifying and sponsoring relationships that have this status. But what, exactly, is that interest? And should there be such an interest? That is, I think, the proper focus of the gay marriage debate.
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One of the primary purposes for the government to be involved in Marriage and civil unions is to oversee the process of divorce: division of property, provision for children, spousal support, etc. (and that even extends to "shacking up").
Another purpose is to convey the legal rights, benefits and obligations that society has decided to confer om couples that opt for the marriage partnership.
These purposes might be combined together under the heading of ensuring fair and equitable treatment.
As a advocate for a strong separation of Church and State, I would prefer that the Government would only issue Civil Union licenses and that that license invoked all the legal aspects of what is now call Marriage.
Churches would become the sole conferrer of their version of marriage. However, there could never be any civil enforcement of whatever rules the Church might adopt. Also, no one would lose any of their rights as a citizen because of those Church rules.
"The fact that we have marriage licenses suggests that the government has an interest in identifying and sponsoring relationships that have this status. But what, exactly, is that interest? And should there be such an interest? That is, I think, the proper focus of the gay marriage debate."
It isn't "the government" which has an interest (*) in marriage, but rather society. And that interest is that same that it has always been -- primarily birth, secondarily death.
Men and women tend to engage in sexual activity with one another. Sexual activity between men and women tends to result in the birth of children.
It is in the interest of society, and thus of all the individual persons involved, to have clearly defined rules which establish just which man is responsible for the well-being of the children born to the women of the society.
Men, and to a lesser extent women, tend to accumulate wealth over their lifetimes.
It is in the interest of society, and thus of all the individual persons involved, to have clearly defined rules which establish just who has a claim to that wealth, and to what extent, upon the death of the wealth-builder.
These rules are naturally built into what marriage really is.
"Gay" mirage is destructive of the ends of real marriage (**).
(*) Legitimate governmant exists to safeguard and further the interests of society. Our government, controlled as it is by leftists, is actively working to undermine the interests of our society; the whole "gay" mirage thing being a prime example of that.
(**) Which is, of course, why the leftist have been pushing it.
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