[quote]entheogens wrote:
Marriage is an institution and like all institutions it evolves. If you really want to look at “traditional marriage” in the West then you will realize for a great part of its history, marriage has not been about “love” it has been about passing on property to heirs.[/quote]
Yes, marriage has evolved - and take a hard look at how. Marriage has been whittled down via our “progressive” path to exclude competing forms, such as polygamy.
We hear plenty that marriage has evolved, but never an honest assessment about what the evolution means - our evolution via “progress” has abandoned polygamy as a viable form of marriage. What does that mean? This “evolution” has mean rejecting certain forms of marriage along the way, not opening up ever more versions of it.
Why does it matter? If you follow the “progressive evolution” angle, progressive society has rejected polygamy, which by all rights, is entitled to all of the exact same arguments gay marriage tries to promote for itself - polygamists can be free, consenting adults in love, they could adopt unwanted children, etc.
Plus, polygamy actually engages in some of the natural acvitity that marriage is supposed to govern - polygamous relationships typically produce children. It is a better argument than that for gay marriage.
And yet. Despite the fact that polygamy enjoys every single argument that gay marriage does, it has been rejected as an act of progress.
It once existed, and despite having all the same arguments that we see gay marriage advocates put forth as reasons to invent gay marriage, Progress has eliminated polygamy as a viable form of marriage.
So, a “progressive” approach is one that will get you nowhere - Progress said “nope” to an institution that was just as valid as gay marriage in terms of being “consenting adults loving one another” or “providing homes for unwanted kids.”
So, there is nothing “progressive” about creating gay marriage on those grounds when that couldn’t save polygamy from being eliminated on our evolutionary path - Progress is clearly measured some other way, otherwise, polygamy would still be around.
Further, if Progress means nothing more than validating alternative forms of marriage on the basis of “consenting adults loving one another”, then we have had no such “evolution” in marriage, since while we were evolving, we rejected forms of marriage that qualified under those criteria.
That can only be described as “regressive”, and marriage, in rejecting polygamy, has taken a step backward rather than a step forward.
I notice you forgot to add “secular” in your list of fundamentalists - which is a shame, because they might be the worst kind: they aren’t honest enough to admit their fundamentalism nor their closed-mindedness.
Perhaps religious fundamentalists are a headache, but hey, at least they are honest about their approach. Charlatans like Forlife are just as CERTAIN, just as ideological, and just as closed-minded as their religious counterparts, but refuse to admit it.
And these Secular Fundies pretend to use Reason while making a shambles of it in the same way many fundamentalists make a mockery of the very religion they are purporting to defend.
It’s pretty awful - but getting them to admit it is about as likely as getting someone to admit to their actual bench press numbers on the internet.
This I agree with - God doesn’t support hate.
But then, refusing to create gay marriage as a public institution is not an act of hate, so it is largely a different discussion.