IF the goal is to foment loyalty, obligation and responsible long term relationships in a community where that is often not the norm that is one thing (civil union?), but if the idea is that a non-reproductive relationship is identical to one that generates progeny . . . that is something quite different. When government defines “relationships” who is to stop that same government from obligating clergy who do not perform such ceremonies (on religious grounds) to perform them?
I feel for you, your impassioned remembrance does both of you great honor, but the “right” to marriage seems to more and more mean very little (like freedom), and by disregarding the “right” of civil union (denigrating it) and demanding change in the definition of what marriage is, we accomplish what? The only accomplishment of such will be to broaden the definition so wide that it will shortly mean nothing. Who is to say that any group can’t marry amongst their “own kind”? I won’t go line by line, but the number of different tangents of psychosexual definitions is wide and broadening daily (Gene Wilder in “Everything you ever wanted to know about Sex and . . .”).
So just as in the 1st paragraph, it’s about the goals and second and third order effects. If the endstate desired is a restriction on reproduction and eventual population shrinkage . . . this is a means (along with voluntary physical/pharmaceutical sterilization, abortions and the encouraged suicide of the aged and infirm). So what seems a perfectly logical step, is (for some) a means to an end.
