- Joined
- Nov 6, 2007
- Messages
- 66,351
- Reaction score
- 29,640
- Location
- Rolesville, NC
- Gender
- Female
- Political Leaning
- Moderate
I realize that gay people can have families. I think that they are statistically less likely to for stable pairs, but that's becoming a problem with the hetero's as well, and I recognize that they can. I don't have a problem with stable couples adopting - better two mommies than the State. That is not my issue - my issue is the redefinition of marriage away from a focus on stable two-parent family formation for the raising of children and towards "two people who love each other", which is what you seem to be either missing or avoiding.
This argument fails because marriage has been about "two people who love each other" for a while now, whether you approve or not. This is what the majority wants, whether they recognize it or not because we allow people who can't have children now to get married, 25% of married opposite sex couples where the woman is of childbearing age do not have children at all (which then would not even get into the number of married opposite sex couples where the woman is not of childbearing age, which is likely much higher), divorce does not take into account children of the couple for whether it is harder for the couple to actually get a divorce, not as far as the state mandates anyway, and >50% of US families are stepfamilies, which are more unstable in general than bio families.
Plus, whether people like it or not, a married couple is still a family, even if they don't have children. And they still get almost every incentive of marriage whether they are able to or even want to have children, and that doesn't change if they never have children. The only ones they could be considered not to get, they wouldn't need since they would pertain directly to access to children/child care for children they don't have.
Marriage is never going back to "for the raising of children" because the majority doesn't want it to. The majority wants people to marry for themselves, instead of the children because it is better to ensure the couple is happy with each other whether they have children or not than to force the couple together or to stay together for the children which leads to unhappy, dysfunctional families. Blame it on women's rights and liberation and in the work force if you wish but it isn't returning to what it once was so the best thing to do is to adapt to what it is.