Quote Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios View Post
But if it regularises a sexual relationship, if that is the essence of marriage, then this means marriage really only serves a single purpose: demarcating who can have sex with who (and who is excluded). Why should such affirmations be withheld from gays? Maybe they'd like their sexual relationship being confirmed by wearing a ring in the same way that heterosexuals would?
It's about reproductive sex, not nooky for the hell of it. It recognises what type of sex produces children

We still haven't touched on the subject of heterosexual unions that are not able to, for whatever reason, have children or possibly even have sex. By this logic, marriage should equally be withheld from them. Or we arrive at the conclusion that it is about something else/more than the children or the sex. But then, that something whatever we may believe it is, why should it be exclusive to heterosexuals?
Well, a couple who do not have sex are not fully married, see below. as to the couple who are incapable of having children, assuming this is a fertility issue it would generally be fair to say that one can take the view that reproduction is highly unlikely rather than impossible. Or, you could equally say that these people are unfortunate, and generally speaking infertility does not become apparent until after a marriage is consumated in any case, at which point the horse has bolted.

I think it's more about confirming a relationship. Elevating it, saying these people and their families are now officially bound. I think the concept of marriage alliance, or arranged marriages, the contractual nature of the whole thing supports this viewpoint. The modern interpretation of this is that of “romantic love” and emphasising the individual partners over their respective families. And I think this is where we should drop the whole requirement of children, sex or whatever -- since these requirements stem from the idea of union of families rather than from the union of two people that marriage has now evolved to.
I don't believe this, in reality marriage alliances were only successful if they produced issue which was a mixing of two bloodlines. To suggest that marriage has "evolved into" the union of two people is clearly false, it has always been the union of two people, and their litteral union through their shared children, that brought the families into kinship.

And at the point where marriage is about the married people, I think there's no reason to deny gays the right to seek having their relationships enshrined the same way any heterosexual one is.

At any rate marriage certainly isn't just about sex not even limited heterosexual sex. If it were, if that were truly what marriage is about --protecting from the consequences of heterosexual sex/regularising sex-- then why does society broadly support heterosexual people living together in a relationship which includes sex? Why is sex accepted to be part of a relationship where marriage is not required at the same time?
Moral and social degeneracy? The invention of the condom? The two are of course undeniably linked. Traditional morals have declined as people increasingly feel that sex is "safe" and as a result teen pregnancies and STD rates have risen.

A marriage can be annulled on grounds that have nothing whatsoever to do with sex, or indeed with anything other than a partner simply not wishing to be bound by the marriage anymore: this is called divorce, and I would say supports my point that marriage is little more than enshrining the union of two people -- who can disband it on a mere whim if they so choose. People even marry, divorce, remarry and divorce again. In Japan people apparently have started marrying manga characters and cushions.
Annullment means the marriage was never valid, divorce means a married couple have broken their marriage contract. Two very different things.

I think the idea that marriage is about the sex (or that the sex even is somewhat interlinked with marriage) no longer applies. At least not here in the “Western” world. So why not allow gays to enjoy the blessings of marriage, too?
Except you shot yourself in the foot earlier.... heterosexuals now have non-reproductive relationships in a way that was previously only possible through homosexual relationships. So really there isn't an inbalance, when a couple want to start a family they should marry, if they are not in that sort of committed relationship then maybe they should wait until they are.

Huh, I suppose contraception must be responsible for our highly polarised sexual mores. That never occured to me before.