Illinois to become 15th state to recognize marriage equality

[kılıç_mehmet]

I'm not claiming that the number is huge, but the precedent is there. Even if there weren't any examples, the fact that 'it's always been that way' just isn't good enough. I gave examples of other traditions, do you support the continuation of those? Slavery has been present in almost all of history, should we allow it because 'it's always been that way'? I'd like to think we can move beyond the archaic discrimination in our past

The marital institution is based on tradition friend. You cannot ignore this aspect. If you want to include everyone into marriage, you must do away with everything that has to do with marriage, including family values, importance of children, and the relation of marriage in respect to society and the state, and turn it into a purely "individualistic" concept that has shed itself of every meaning it held before.

And after you did this, what remains of this age-old institution that formed the basis of society? Nothing. You can call it marriage, but it won't be marriage, it will be something else, an empty word.
Change for the sake of change is chaos. Some things are better left untouched, and in this case, unspoiled.

But there are people who choose to be infertile. There are also those who discover they're infertile before they marry.

They are fringe examples that have no relevance to the overall picture.
The primary function of the marital institution is to create stability, and to create stability for the purpose of allowing people to have and raise children in a stable environment, that is, having both a definite father and mother, a man and a woman, required for the natural procreation mechanism.
What purpose does it serve for society to allow people that are irrelevant to the marital institution to get married?
None, it serves none. Other than to drain the marital insitution of its purpose, its traditions, and its relation to society.

But if 2 people can constitute a family, what does it matter if they're the same gender?

No, they can't.

What makes you think that a homosexual couple can't have family values?

Because they never were part of the traditions that have spawned the said family values. They were not even part of society until halfway of the 20th century, they lived out their lifestyles in secret, and participatd in regular society by means of conforming to its standards.
So they never had any part in the creation of its traditions, neither did they have any part in the marital and familial insitutions.
And the basic natural fact that they cannot procreate and no child will ever be the result of a union of same sex couples simply adds to the reason why they never were a part of these institutions. They're simply not relevant.

I bet I can show you a damn sight more examples of dysfunctional families with heterosexual parents than you can with homosexual parents.

I bet you can, however it would not count as an argument.
Even the most dysfunctional family is more relevant, they can actually contribute to society via the creation of children, and providing the said children with more or less of a home, and more or less of a father-mother figure.
To have a child, you need a man and a woman, not two men, and not two women. This should give you an idea why the marital institution was based on men and women.

I wasn't aware that marriage was some unalterable law of nature that could only be interpreted in one way.

Well, interpret it as you wish, I can't tell you how to think.
But marriage is not something that is built on interpretations, its built on traditions,it is built on its relevance to society. The relevance of marriage to society was to create an environment where the familial institution would flourish. That's about it. Its there to provide people with responsibilities, regarding society and the future of society, the children.
Homosexuals on the other hand did not have a comparable responsibility to the propagation of society as heterosexuals did, so they never were included in the marital institution. It's as simple as that. Its not something open to your, or my interpretation.

It can only be this way because that's the way it always was.

And it was like that for a reason, that's all I'm saying.
You on the other hand deny that there was such a reason.
You're in fact, denying marriage itself.

You know, humans were nomadic hunters and gatherers for far longer than we've had cities and stationary homes. Is civilization wrong?

Civilisation is inseperable from marriage and family.
However, civilisation can very well exist without the homosexuals roam ing free with their sexual identities and laying claims on things that they never owned, such as marriage.
However civilisation cannot exist without people having children, and certainly not without having children in a stable environment(that is marriage and the traditional family) that includes the people that were involved in the baby-making process.

Was it a violation of the natural order to live in a hut and grow crops and tend livestock?

Again, living in huts, growing crops and practicing animal husbandry has relevance to society, it provides people with shelter, and a semi-sustainable food source. So does marriage and family institution provide people with a set of responsibilities to raise children in a more secure and more stable environment, while keeping random-sexual relations at a minimum, and the population stable.
What sort of a relevance does it have for us to grant marital rights to homosexuals?
It's not something that is done to benefit society, its done solely to please a minority.

As a white man, that works just as well to justify me enslaving people with brown skin. Society viewed my kind as inherently and naturally superior to people with other skin colors. Did this stop being true? Is it still true but we're living in multicultural denial? Or, was it never true in the first place?

It really doesn't impress me that you appeal to an entirely different topic to justify your position in this topic. These are not even on the same level, as again, sexual minorities are a lot, lot less relevant to social issues than ethnic/racial minorities are.