Well there was what seemed to be a rather bigoted individual here recently who touched on a valid concern. Unfortunately, he used it as a shield for his beliefs rather than a problem to be understood and worked at.
The problem is;
What is the purpose of marriage under law?
Is it to raise kids? Is it to create some mini-corporation?
I think it’s simply a way of coping with what has become a common phenomenom, which is that sometimes two people fall in love and make a bond to share their lives.
If we are to recognize and extend benefits to such an entity as a household: such as the unlimited marriage exemption, tax benefits (in some instances) health care coverage, various rights of survivorship and departure, and do this for heterosexual couples, than by what mechanism can we reasonably refuse to do this for homosexual couples?
Of course, religions are free to construe marriage as they will, and need not recognize anybody they don’t wish to, but I can’t think of any reasonable scenario for excluding gay couples who wish to share their lives from the legal benefits, conveniences, and protections that marriage provides.
The only argument that I hear that even approaches reasonable sense is the question of children.
Is it reasonable to assume that the main purpose of marriage is procreation, and since a gay couple is probably less likely to procreate (just a guess) they therefore should not receive the same benefits?
I don’t think so. Times have changed. There’s adoption and surrogates. There really is nothing stopping a gay couple from having and raising children if that’s what they want.
And really, this doesn’t matter, because heterosexual couples receive the benefits of marriage whether or not they procreate, and, they recieve additional benefits when they have a child.
An interesting conundrum is that if we are to exclude gays from the contract of marriage becuase of nonprocreation then wouldn’t it be fair to also exempt them from school taxes and such?
If they are not getting the benefits, why should they foot the bill?
A gay couple getting married is simply an alternate way of doing things. It is no more beyond the natural order than a childless couple’s adopting is.
Should we deny an adopted child status as heir, and the legal protections of having a responsible guardian simply because it is not that couple’s genetic offspring?
The very same arguments apply towards denying rights to an adopted child as they do towards gay marriage yet you hear no one calling out to strip the rights of adopted children, and you hear nobody saying that under law it really shouldn’t be their child.
Personally, I draw the marriage line at any couple of legal marriagable age.
There are serious problems with the ramifications of multi-partner marriages, which make such an arrangement a very different thing from the tradittional, and it would need to be treated differently is such a thing were ever to become legal.
But, there really is no reasonable objection to same sex marriage under law.