[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
On the non-legal and non-religious side, this is interesting:
Marriage - considered as a legally sanctioned union of one man and one woman - plays a vital role in preserving the common good and promoting the welfare of children. In virtually every known human society, the institution of marriage provides order and meaning to adult sexual relationships and, more fundamentally, furnishes the ideal context for the bearing and rearing of the young. The health of marriage is particularly important in a free society such as our own, which depends upon citizens to govern their private lives and rear their children responsibly, so as to limit the scope, size, and power of the state. Marriage is also an important source of social, human, and financial capital for children, especially for children growing up in poor, disadvantaged communities who do not have ready access to other sources of such capital. Thus, from the point of view of spouses, children, society, and the polity, marriage advances the public interest.
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Boston, I know what you are getting at with this but these statements are speculation at best. To say that a convention such as legally defined marriage provides order and meaning is nonsensical. This is like saying unwed mothers cannot provide for their children. Also this article does not explain how the traditional marriage “plays a vital role in preserving the common good and promoting the welfare of children” verses a non-traditional marriage. At best it states what the ideal should be but does not even address how it is supposedly better than alternative ideas.
What this article is trying to claim is exactly what needs to be challenged–we cannot live in a society that would try to assert certain conventions via a “pseudo-religious” argument disguised as a sociological one.