i do or do i?

the marriages continue
this is a mess of should they, sould we let them, is it right/wrong/ethical/moral?
i have an opinion on this. of course, why else would i be mentioning such a thing?
anyway, i think that honestly marriage is not something that is absolutely necessary in this case. I dont believe that it really changes anything from a relationship point of view. if they have been living together for 5 years and acting as a married couple, does having a marriage license now suddenly change the situation in any dramatic way?
besides, marriage as an institution was not set up for love. it has become an expression of love (well a little less so currently) through customs and whatnot, but that is not what it was intended to do when it came about. see, marriage was created in order to assure that the children being sired belonged to a specific man (yes man, back in the day women werent exactly prized property) and to therefore bind the man to the woman and the woman to the man. it was a sort of assurance that your woman would produce your offspring and no one elses. from this we fast forward a couple of decades and suddenly marriage has somehow become intertwined with love (remember that there still are arranged marriages, and the royal families where big fans of bloodlines and desirable traits... bred like show dogs they were) but eventually it was no longer a matter of who you would marry based on what they had or what family they belong to, etc. it was whom you loved. well this is great, but nothing more than an extension based on the original reason for marriage. then the sexual revolution has made marriage a little less important due to the ability to control the reproductive process (ie. the pill... women where now free to sleep around just like the men) and suddenly sex is no longer reserved until after marriage, and marriage becomes less permanent (if you control when you get pregnant, not only can you sleep around in college, but adultery becomes easier because there wont be any mysterious pregnancies... see its all about thinking things through a bit). if you can have sex with someone and not get pregnant, well, why not go one step further and assure that you can have sex whenever you want it as well? and thus we have people living together, but not marriage because that still has some ideas implied and connected to it. eventually there is marriage, but its no longer permanent, it only lasts so long as the people like each other. no long term affection (because in a world of disposable loves and partners, long term relationships are being affected and are changing into something slightly above a decade long fling -7year itch anyone?-). ok so marriage is something of a mess, but its still a custom society respects and recognizes. civil marriages differ from religious marriages. and nobody should argue with a religion that refuses to condone homosexual marriages (because its a religion with tenets and laws that form the base of the religion, if we can suddenly argue any LAW -not suggestion, or guideline, but LAW unchanging and permanent- and have the church change its stance on it, what is to stop a large enough group from arguing against the adultery law -love thy neighbor?-??).
civil marriage brings benefits with it, benefits that arose due to the primary function of marriage, childbearing couples. Now granted not all couples can or do, raise children. but they, heterosexuals, have a much larger probability of birthing a child than the homosexuals (who have 0 probability on their own, without the recourse given to lesbians of artificial means, which impose a larger cost on society than the natural method). and even in the event that homosexuals adopt or come about producing a child through other means, the fact of it remains that they have removed themselves from the human gene pool. so there is no passing on of their unique genetic makeup, instead of increasing the variety of genes available, this dilutes the gene pool a bit. but that isnt too important right now (it would be if heterosexual relationships suddenly became rare.) back to the rights given by civil marriages. these exist to facilitate the raising and creation of offspring. maternity leave? to allow the mother to give birth. the ability to claim people as dependants, and leave them money/property at the time of death? to allow the surviving member to look after the child and improve their ability to survive and repeat the whole process over. so if homosexual couples want these rights then it shouldnt be addressed through the process of marriage, instead ask for the rights (the government has already created seperate institutions to address the changes in society, so why not this as well.) it wont be called marriage, but civil union? or perhaps something altogether new, which would be equivalent of a marriage but without the official title of marriage, they will have almost the exact same rights as married couples.
then theres the whole adoption issue for them. some argue that they shouldnt be allowed. others say that they should because of some reason or another. i cant say for certain that they should or shouldnt. it should be a case by case basis. on the other hand, it opens up for a fair amount of research as to whether or not society determines a persons sexuality or if its genetic. (simply put, how many of the children adopted by homosexual couples become homosexuals themselves compared to the amount of homosexuals that where raised by hetersexuals?) and would the children be impaired due to the public reaction to homosexual couples? (something like, would the childhood of a boy raised by convicted felons have a marked difference from the childhood of a boy raised by the average white, afluent american couple?)... so many questions and issues, and there isnt a simple answer to be found.
this is probably going to keep happening for a while, and will create a whole slew of new regulations (similar to the politically correct language that we are now expected to use, even though it gets in the way of everything, costs an insane amount of money to maintain and is ultimately not the best way to go about it)... so yeah.
why is marriage important now anyway?