The practical purpose of marriage is to give protections to the woman who bears a greater liability in childbearing. This doesn't apply to gay "marriage", except in contrived cases. I'm actually yet to hear an argument in the favor of gay marriage that doesn't do one of the following:
1. Torture the definition of "equal". As if a law specifically designed to cover a specific relationship between a "man and a woman" is somehow invalid, whereas laws that cover specific relationships between a "lawyer and client" or "doctor and patient" or "parent and child" or "employer and employee" or "clergyman and worshipper" or 1000s and 1000s of others are never considered unconstitution.
2. Appeal to emotion. Ie, domestic partners can't automatically visit each other in the hospital when one is incapacitated, etc.
> The practical purpose of marriage is to give protections to the woman who bears a greater liability in childbearing.
[citation needed]
Accepting that for the sake of argument — suppose I'm sterile, then. Or I just don't plan on having any kids. Do I still have a right to all the benefits that heterosexual couples obtain from legally recognized marriage? If so, then on what basis are those rights granted to me, but not to my gay neighbors next door? (I'm seriously curious whether you'll say no, sterile couples don't deserve those rights, or whether you'll just engage in more special pleading toward the prescribed end of denying marriage rights to gay couples.)
But back in reality, those of my friends who've gotten married already had many reasons for doing so, and "giving protections to the woman who bears a greater liability in childbearing" certainly wasn't at the top of their lists.
And dismissing discussion of crucial benefits such as the right to visit your husband or wife in the hospital as "appeals to emotion" is nothing short of absurd.
The practical purpose of marriage is to give protections to the woman who bears a greater liability in childbearing.
That is maybe one practical purpose of marriage, but it's not the legal basis, and there's a lot more to it from a societal perspective.
I think the lawyer/client and doctor/patient argument is interesting, but feels a little hollow, because people are in a position to choose to become doctors, lawyers, clients, and patients freely. There is no inherent discrimination in those relationships. Would you expect a special class of legal relationships between a black man and a white woman? I wouldn't.
I can't believe you're being voted down. The idea that marriage is solely for the purpose of childbearing is patently absurd. Marriage is a lifelong partnership with a myriad of benefits and responsibilities, some of which are recognized and codified by the state. The state also recognizes that marriage provides enormous good to society, not only child care, but also care of the aging, the unemployed and the infirm. It is also a partnership that is deeper, longer lasting and more important to society than that between any lawyer/barber/personal trainer and client.
> The practical purpose of marriage is to give protections to the woman who bears a greater liability in childbearing.
Got a cite for that? If protection of childbearing women were such a great concern, wouldn't we expect societies to have historically provided much more protection to children born by non-married women, too? Yet historically when the Lord diddled the maid, neither the maid nor her bastard received any protection at all. Why single out married women to receive protection?
It seems far more likely to me that marriage was to provide a stable framework upon which to build a predictable system of inheritance of land. When the Lord dies, you really want to have a clear transfer of ownership, for the good of the estate and the commoners who depend on it.
1. Torture the definition of "equal". As if a law specifically designed to cover a specific relationship between a "man and a woman" is somehow invalid, whereas laws that cover specific relationships between a "lawyer and client" or "doctor and patient" or "parent and child" or "employer and employee" or "clergyman and worshipper" or 1000s and 1000s of others are never considered unconstitution.
2. Appeal to emotion. Ie, domestic partners can't automatically visit each other in the hospital when one is incapacitated, etc.