Homosexual Marriage

It only really occurred to me recently to question the legitimacy of homosexual marriage outside of God's disapproval of it. "God doesn't like it," is really a terrible argument against anything because God may dislike completely arbitrary things. But what is marriage, really? Why does it exist and to what end? Marriage seems to be predicated by the advent of private property, which led to the idea of inheritance. At the heart of it, marriage is built upon the distribution of wealth within a family.

But modernity has interpreted the institution of matrimony differently; it has become all about romantic love, which, while a clearly important part of marriage and parenthood, is very fickle and fleeting. Marriages end because they are now centered on passion rather than a higher ideal behind that passion. As looks fade and familiarity breeds contempt, marriage becomes a neverending hedonic cycle, into which some are born purely from circumstance.

Marriage as a means of inheritance would exclude same sex partners because they produce no heirs. Of course, by that logic, marriages involving persons who are sterile or infertile would also lose their legitimacy. Then again, adoption is a possibility among any of the aforementioned pairings, and wills may be drawn leaving wealth to any heir at a person's whim.

So what do you think? Is marriage about inheritance. Is it about love? Is same sex marriage a meaningful thing to desire?

Marriage and relationships took a strange turn in the Romantic period and those changes have stuck with us. You are right, the interpretation of matrimony has become dependent on this, in my opinion, a non existent form of perpetual romantic passionate love that we see coming out of the Romantic period. This false narrative that we have formed around marriage is partly why we see monogamous relationship both in and outside of marriage fail. The hedonistic view of what sex and physical love should look like is a hinderance to the wellbeing of the relationship.

I do not believe secular government should have any say in "marriage" perse, at least how it is presented itself so far in our culture. To me, marriage is a strictly religious endeavor between persons. A civil union or something like it can be had in a secular society, and be maintained by a secular government, but I believe marriage being regulated by the state is a undue commingling of two things I feel should be separate.

That being said, I believe homosexuals, according to our cultural understanding of marriage, should be undoubtedly allowed to marry if they so wish.

I waffle around whether or not a state should endorse marriage. Most recently, I've come to believe a state is reliant on marriage for its continuation. Without new people being introduced sexually, a state/society has to rely on immigration, which, as we have seen, is easily gamed for political gain. And if a state must rely on people-producing unions, maybe it should endorse only heterosexual unions.

Of course, back to adoption, sometimes people are produced and not cared for and proper person-care is also in the best interest of a state. So a same-sex couple raising a child in a familial structure might be superior to the absence of that structure, for the individual and thus for the collective. Then marriage becomes more about child-rearing than child-producing. Maybe any union in which there is no intent to rear nor produce children should be found illegitimate.

What does a union that does not produce and/or rear children give to the state that the state offers privileges to it? You know, besides taxes the state would collect either way.