Homophobia

[Angrboda]

The controversy over homosexual marriage is largely a matter of public policy. Most Christians do indeed oppose it on largely religious grounds. Not all do. There are some secular grounds for opposition to gay marriage as-well.  My own position is that marriage is a sacrament and that government should get out of the marriage business entirely; although, it is difficult to imagine how that could even happen given how useful recognition of lawful familial relationships are. A narrowly defined consensus clarifies the legal obligations of family members to each other. Once an institution, like marriage, becomes too elastically defined it ceases to be useful and muddles one’s ability to think clearly about roles and responsibilities unique to a marital relationship. In heated debates, I have called same-sex marriages “pretend marriages” which is definitely an insult but still accurately reflects my belief that same-sex marriages are essentially different from traditional marriages.  The same reasons that justify gay marriage undermine any basis for recognizing the concept of marriage itself. The word becomes devoid of content. The issuance of gay-marriages is a massive social experiment. It could later prove to be no big deal and maybe even beneficial for society as a whole but I am very skeptical for now.  I suspect that, in general, the further a family’s organization deviates from the traditional nuclear family the less stable and healthy it will be.

Marriage is a sacrament? WTF? I'm pretty sure that people have been forming couples independent of religion for a long time. If you simply mean that this is what your religion teaches you, well that's fine. But marriage as an institution belongs to all people, not just those of this religion or that. Marriage is a secular institution because recognition of those private commitments has a very public function. I don't see how you can withdraw that without hurting both marriage and society. The only thing I can see would benefit from that is putting the control of marriage under the thumb of majority religions like Christianity and Islam, to the detriment of anyone and everyone else. Given your talking points, I doubt this is so much your goal as it is you mindlessly parroting party talking points. What good do you see coming from reserving marriage to the province of religious institutions? What basis do you have for thinking that marriage in any sense is or should be primarily a religious sacrament?