Legalizing gay marriage

I think we still need to agree on precisely what "marriage" is and what its purpose is before we debate on who it should apply to. I think it'd be great to hear your perspective in the format of a statement like "Marriage is a ____ between _____ in order to ____. It is good for society because _______" "A recognition of love" is not an adequate definition for marriage from either a legal or societal perspective. Unions between men and women, whether they were called "marriage" or not, have existed since the dawn of the human species -- if they were not social or political, they were certainly sexual or we would not be here today. People who married may have been in love but the presence of the emotion was surely not the reason that societies developed this institution, which has lasted for tens of thousands of years. Do you really think that our ancestors, who spent hundreds of thousands of years in hunter-gather cultures where life was miserable, food was scarce, death was imminent, and intelligence was limited, would worry about declaring "lifelong love" between people? If it were true, why weren't there institutions that developed that acknowledged other emotions like hatred or jealousy? The primary reason why marriage was invented in the first place was to encourage strong, stable relationships between men, women and their children. Our ancestors acknowledged the complementary nature of the sexes and the need for a union that would mutually benefit everyone involved. They saw that the absence of such a binding institution created trends that were not good for societal stability -- fathers who didn't know who their children were that lost incentive to contribute to the tribe, single mothers who lacked resource providers, bastard children who lacked anyone to provide for them. In fact, the biological complementarity of the sexes is the explanation for nearly everything. The root of attraction lies ENTIRELY in mate selection. It isn't random and arbitrary. The things that we find attractive in a person reflect their ability to carry or nurture or provide for the child. Men seek fertility, youth and beauty. Women seek resource provision, social dominance, and proof of superiority over other men. It's amazing that a lot of non-believers think the Bible is a sexist, racist, homophobic etc. old document but have no clue that evolution supports the exact same conclusions. The specific attributes that are attached to marriage came from this recognition of the unique design of the sexes. The preference for monogamy and sexual exclusivity? That was a way for a man to guarantee paternity for his child. The promise of lifelong commitment? That's a way for a woman to guarantee continuous provision of resources in exchange for carrying and nurturing the man's child. The union of one woman and one man? That was a way to guarantee each child had access to both the physical resources of the father (food, shelter) and the emotional resources of the mother (nurturing, raising), reducing the pressure on their tribe. The institution of marriage and its rules were not arbitrary inventions based on randomness or recognition of people's emotions. Did that mean that couples were not in love? No, of course they were. It just meant that the specific social institution of marriage was created to facilitate stability within society --- so fathers knew who were their children, so women were tied to provisions so they would not perish, so children would have an increased chance of survival. Even polygamists follow some of these basic rules of sexual complementarity. Notice how you yourself said marriage has sometimes been "a man and many women". Have you wondered why it's very rare to see the opposite -- one woman with multiple men? The answer once again lies in the fixed realities of the sexual market. One man with a lot of resources could easily impregnate five women. In contrast, if there were five men with one woman, none of them would know who the father was and reduce the chances of their genes passing down. The deal was thus disadvantageous for many men and those types of marriages sprung up rarely. Everything about marriage concerns the basic reality of the complementary sexual design of men and women. In fact, even if you think that religion is all lies, you can still see why the people who created it would put these rules as the word of "God" -- they ensured stability. One may argue that since marriage is a social institution, its definition can change over time. That's true, but the biological reality of the sexes is fixed and set in stone. If marriage is treated as an arbitrary concept with no basis in reality or natural law, then it will quickly lose meaning, much like if you take a word and let every person give it a different definition. You need consistency in order for something to last. You have to resort to natural absolutes to create effective policies that last. The only difference between secular opponents of gay marriage and religious ones is that they disagree on the creator of these natural absolutes. But they exist regardless of who created them. The "definitions change" argument is also not good for the pro gay marriage crowd because it means that the term can change once again, for example if religious people emerge as a majority demographic (which fertility rates say they will, contrary to the media myth that religion is dying). If you need proof that the opening of marriage to any and every definition has harmful effects, take a look at the last 50 years. Like I said, we have the lowest marriage rates ever, we have extremely short, hedonistic relationships where people are treated as sexual objects to be replaced, we have the highest rates of out of wedlock births ever, we have an increasing number of people who never have children which leads to a dying population, and various other dysgenic results. People have NO CLUE what marriage is supposed to mean because it has so many different definitions. It's for children, it's for love, it's for legal benefits, it's for "equality", on and on and on. Regardless of what you'd like marriage to be, you can't create a stable institution unless people have a consistent understanding of it. As I said earlier, the only way to ensure that consistency is if the institution is based on natural absolutes that are not subject to change, not our emotions or cultural fancies.