I have a friend – “frenemy” maybe – who was opposed to legalizing gay marriage, because it changed the definition of the word. Very odd reasoning!
People of the same sex can legally marry. Nothing you can say changes that.
Gay marriages do not directly affect other people’s marriages and I have never claimed it did. When the legal definition of marriage changes it changes the culture. The purpose of marriage is to provide a template for how a couple can get together to raise a family. Over the last 50 or so years there has been a huge shift in how the culture approaches marriage from an institution about providing stability for raising kids to one about happiness for the people involved. This has made it less stable, and led to increasing divorce, single parenthood, broken homes, child molestation, crime, inequality, and unhappiness. That is the cost of the changing norms around marriage.
Wow! Why not blame gay marriage for global climate change, the high price of fuel and Covid-19 while you’re at it? 
On the other hand, changing attitudes about marriage (and divorce) have also made it more feasible for people who have found themselves in abusive, dysfunctional, or broken marriages to actually get out of them, and to be able to do so without facing intense social stigma.
Also, it’s now less likely that a homosexual will feel societal pressure to get married to a member of the opposite sex, in order to present a straight persona to society.
The main goal of marriage, earlier on, was to act as an alliance between families.
Anyone can raise kids. But money and inheritance require rules that everyone agrees on.
Traditional marriage is so important that Republicans voted for a man who had three of them.
Marriage is defined in law. Current law in the United States and some other countries defines marriage as between two consenting adults who may or may not be of the same gender.
Your comment also indicates a certain unfamiliariaty with the actual history of marriage for most of human history.
And, in this case, it changed the culture for the better. It increased liberty, without any significant downside. A very few people feel harmed, because now they have to bake wedding cakes for gay couples, but, seriously, that’s the single worst harm that has come out of the matter. Would that all social revolutions were so bloodless!
oh lord…thought I made some points re: conservatives aren’t all bible thumping homophobes and then…
Whenever I see an adherent of the political party that worships an amoral whoremonger who fathered five children with three different women try to take the moral high ground like this, I can’t stop laughing. Conservatives no longer support or respect family values.
This is a great point. The idea that modern Republican party members and supporters put any sort of priority on “family values” is just a pathetic joke. It obviously doesn’t matter to them at all, and it’s pretty clear that it never did aside from when it was useful as a line of political attack. No prominent Democrat has ever been as disgustingly immoral in their personal life as Trump.
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
Then why do they mention family values on to this day?
Consenting adults. On the other hand, Trump has bragged about violating the consent of multiple women and girls on multiple occasions, and has been credibly accused of rape by over a dozen women and girls.
Hypocrisy?
And blaming gay marriage for the decline in family values is totally backwards anyway.
Gay men and women have decided that they value the stability accorded by the traditional family structure. They want to commit to each other, have children, work hard to support them and build a family. They want the option of a simple, boring mainstream life. Conservatives should be cheering this.
But, conservative principles and values are nothing but a smoke screen. it all about marginalizing the out groups and the political opposition.
That’s why the people that rant about the federal government exceeding its constitutionally granted powers cheer as federal troops attack blacks and liberals in American cities.
That’s why the party that preaches balanced budgets and prudent spending ran up massive deficits engaged in a barrage of excessive spending and ill-advised tax cuts because a con man promised them extravagant returns that never materialized.
It’s why the elected representatives and officials and media spokespeople of party of law and order launch concerted campaigns to publicly intimidate judges And eternal law enforcement officials and exonerate criminals.
And the party of “family values” was all in with a family separation policy officially known as a “family separation policy”.
C’mon, aren’t even pretending to be decent people anymore.
But at least Clinton kept up the facade and made a difficult relationship work. He stayed married to the same women his whole life and raised his daughter in a two parent home instead of getting a divorce and a new wife every time his pecker twitched.
Sounds like the kind of marriage you are advocating for when you talk about valuing success and stability while putting personal happiness on the back burner.
Trump has had (at least) 5 kids with three different women because of gay marriage?
You see how insidious it is!