PoliticalReality wrote on Jun 13
th, 2012 at 2:07pm:
As you clearly do not understand what marriage is perhaps you should stay out of the debate?
Ask yourself the question "Why do people get married?"
Now is there anything about same sex relationships that should stop them from being able to ask themselves the same question?
Two guys getting 'married' is a perversion of the idea of marriage.
Marriage is a social institution for the purpooses of the society first, the married couple second (that is why it is a legal, not merely personal matter). It is a social institution. That is why the state is a stakeholder. For the churches it is also a sacrament, that is, it is recognbised by religious and secular tradition as a social institution. There is no such thing for friendship, or even siblinghood. There is no Friendship Act or Sibling Act but there is Marraige Act.
SO let's take that as read - it's not just about the two people.
So why do people get married? People get married because they want to be recognised as a social unit that is bridging the generations and performs all the other social and sacred acts that marraige is recognised for. People do not get married to have sex or kids or any of the private things that they can do equally without being married.
It is no accidnt that marriage is a ceremony. Like all ceremonies, it is a transformation. It trascends the two persons getting married and makes them into something that they cannot be without that ceremony.
It is a commitment to the other person
as well as the society that sanctions the marriage. ANd that society is about preserving and improving what it has inherited and will transmit to the future.