I agree, so gays should be able to marry. The government should not care.
Except this is not a part of marriage now. We do not require any fertility tests prior to marriage. In fact, there are states that actually require some couples to prove they are incapable of having children prior to allowing them to marry.
In point of fact, very few, if any, of the benefits of marriage depend on children. Almost all (and possibly all) of the benefits that are often attributed to married people with children are equally available to single parents.
I'm not aware of any programs that give money to people simply for being married. What programs are you speaking of?
Except, again, you are relying on a purpose for marriage that has been proven false. When we require some people to prove they cannot reproduce before allowing them to marry, when we allow the elderly who are incapable of reproduction.
Maybe a question, about a year ago, Washington state proposed a law that would limit marriage to those who have children. If a couple got married, they had two years to have a child -- if they did not then the state would dissolve their marriage. So, based on your idea that marriage is for reproduction, would you support such a law? Why or why not?
Because you appear to make the assumption that gay couples, or infertile couples, will not adopt, become foster parents, or even use services such as sperm banks, surrogate mothers, etc. to have children.
This piece assumes that no money or taxpayer resources would be affected by the legal change from (I'll make the difference obvious):
Marriage as an institution of those typically fertile (M/F) couples.
To...
Marriage as an institution of those who have a partner.
That is, we add millions of sterile, generally childless couples, and couples with few children.
So, we can clearly conclude a fairly decent demographic shift.
Much of the monetary pieces are things like Social Security payment! I'm sure when discussion martial rights, that this program undoubtedly comes up, right? There is no way to avoid the conclusion that adding these millions of couples to the social security program will damage an already questionable institution.
I'll assume it was an oversight on your part.
Marriage "being based on children" hasn't been "proven false" because a government decided that adopting some law was not prudent. It simply demonstrates that the government has power to make prudent decisions regarding the institution of marriage.
You can level all kinds of claims at me here, but it won't conquer the A) the fact that most politician understand your claim and disagree, or B) that the demographics indicate that children are certainly involved in marriages, and to a greater extent than same-sex unions, and C)gay people can get married to people of the opposite sex, just like everyone else.
So, do you want to discuss it as a purely emotional issue? That is where divorce comes from.
And at the end we have going outside marriage for "natural" children passively encouraged by the government... I'm not swayed by that "extraordinary" scenario.
In matters of adoption one wonders if similar M/F parents are available if one should choose them over a same-sex couple, and to what degree similarity is necessary. Does that seem bigoted? Why don't we go confuse some fourteen year olds by telling them that girls and boys are the same! Same dignity, but I would say (though you probably don't care) profoundly different and tremendously similar.
And for same sex couples:
The obvious differentiation here being that in one case the child is typically "bred" from both parents and not so (whatsoever) in the case of the same sex couple.
Whereas people sometimes use a black/white race point to counter in these discussions with some... pro-traditional marriage people, it is clear that the proceeding point is completely factual and has nothing to do with "mixed coloreds" or something like that.
So, we certainly have a difference. Again, the government need not overlook significant differences for the determination of programs in order to avoid "sexism."
