Applause to Governor Christie!!!!
Why? To answer that I have to express my veiw on "what is marriage". Some form Marriage of course goes back to pre-writing (pre-Biblical also) times and has arrisen in almost all societies no matter how remote or seperated. Incest is bad genetically, somehow ancient peoples found this out and most societies up to the present have had some sort of taboo about incest (OK, Pharoahs, Roman Emporers, and European Royalty thought it was ok because they also thought that they had special bloodlines and normal rules shouldn't apply to them). Most, if not all forms of marriage historiclly have been based around what woman was reproducing with what man and whose kids are those. For men, it gave them "ownership" of a dedicated sexual partner(s), for women it gave them a dedicated provider and protecter theoretically giving her a ensured means of support for her and her children. The core of marriage is to identify blood lines and legalise some form of support for women and children. It has, mostly, only been the last 30-40 years that women have started to move away from this support structure.
The modern US version of marriage has mainly been around for less than a century (it actually changes over time). The modern version primarily altered things like providing insurance and benefits to a wife through her husband. Our current manifestation still has those ideas which are largely based upon the fact that women needed that linking because they did not, normally, go out into the job market; instead, they stayed at home, cared for and nurtured their children. (interesting side note: Most of our social/political problems we face increased at a lagtime of about 18 years from a similiar increase of single mothers and women working outside the home. (Topic for another thread there)). Now, many, if not the majority of wifes do work outside the home and sometimes are the provider of the benefits. The whole concept of marriage giving a wife (normally, sometimes husband) benefits derived from being married was based upon the fact that women are the ones who are limited and for a time, unable to actually work. Also, they were historically expected to be the one to nuture and educate the children (hey, their mammary glands produce milk for infants, a man's don't and formula is a rather modern invention).
So now we come to homosexual marriage. Homosexuals feel they are not being treated equally because their "life partner" cannot receive the benefits of a spouse and that partnership is not socially or legally recognised. But, is this really true? I don't think so. Since marriage and benefits linked to marriage are centered around the fact that married couples reproduce and children must be cared for, there is no reason for homosexuals to be married. Homosexual conduct does not lead to reproduction and therefore there is no need for one partner to remain at home and care for children. The only reason for homosexual couples to get marred would be so that the lazy, non-working or under-employed partner can gain benefits by forcing employers to pay for additional benefits. There is absolutely no reason this should be necessary, there are no children, so both partners can and should work outside the home and receive benefits based upon that employment. Some of you may point out that some homosexuals come out late and may have already had children from a normal relationship, not really a problem, since I consider homosexualality to be a mental disorder, children should never remain in the primary custody of the aberrated parent, they should always go to the normal parent.
And because society makes up marriage they also have the right to define or change it.
