On Jun 23, 7:21 pm, animalishness live.com> wrote:

Snip

It is seldom that I have read such a poorly constructed, illogical
piece of contrived and forced nonsense. Let us be clear. Marriage as
an institution has existed in various forms for thousands of years,
long before the Christians, Jews or Muslims co-opted it into their
religious myths. Civil marriage as it exists today in the United
States is a civil contract between two people by which they enter into
a series of mutually held privileges and responsibilities concerning
property. In Victorian times, this was a transfer of chattel, the
wife, and her property from her father to her husband. In our more
enlightened times, things are fortunately more egalitarian and women
are no longer legally the chattel of their fathers or husbands.

Reproduction is often the result of two people being married but not
always. Further procreation is common among people who are not
married and that has been true all through history. Millions of
people have been married who are either incapable of procreating or
have no desire to do so. They are not barred from marriage which puts
paid to any argument that civil marriage is about procreation.
Further the argument that same sex marriage is a dead end is equally
an invalid argument. First, many same sex couples do have children
through surrogates or artificial insemination. Additionally the
decision of a same sex couple to not have progeny is the same as that
of a mixed sex couple. Their blood lines may end with their
respective deaths but the human race is no serious jeopardy of dying
out due to a lack of reproduction. Same sex marriage is not likely to
cause ever large numbers of humans to decide to switch their sexual
orientations and opt for same sex marriage. The idea is obviously
absurd.

The attempt to equate marriage with science is also absurd. Marriage
has nothing to do with hard science. The sun will rise tomorrow,
gravity will function and humans will reproduce whether the social
construct of marriage exists or not. History shows us that marriage
has taken various forms beside the traditional western ideal of
monogamy and even indicates that at different times in history their
have been marriages between same sex couples albeit less common that
heterosexual marriages. Amerind societies accepted gay men and women
and these individuals did marry in the traditional sense of their
cultures. Polynesian societies have done the same until they came
into contact with the London Missionary Society. There are
indications that the ancient Egyptians had similar couples and fo
course Boswell discusses other examples of the same activity.

The original poster makes the rather amazing comment that heterosexual
couples are fo greater value than homosexual couples because they can
reproduce. To equate the mere act of reproduction on an individual
level to some sort of social utility scale is a monstrous concept.
Who has greater value to society, the gay man or woman who develops a
cure for cancer or a environmentally sound energy source of less
utility than a truck driver and his hairdresser wife living in a
trailer park? All human life is of value regardless of its utility
ranking.