My stereotypical opinion on gay marriage(Ban it along with all the rest of marriages.)

What? Every atheist blog has to have a post about gay marriage?
Fine. I guess. Here goes.
But I'm not doing the legwork! I'm going to just repost a comment thread I started from The Religious Researcher instead.
This is the post.

I respond

Your arguments are constructed well for a person who operates within the framework of Christianity, however I would like to ask what you think of policy?

Why can’t we just say:
Marriage is a binary contract, between two previously unrelated individuals, for the purpose of creating a relation between them.

Extend rights to support and help EVERYONE in your family, regardless of actual relation as long as it’s within 2(as in, I can buy insurance for my sister and her child since I support them and I can claim them as dependents, and could even adopt my nephew and claim legal rights to him if my sister agrees) which would help everyone get what they needed out of marriage.

This provides for the common good, as in one person who needs to support someone else they love(or are obligated to) extends currently only to spouses and children/grandchildren.

The only reason you shouldn’t be allowed then, to marry your sister, is because a relationship already exists.

The reason I say this is because someone who is going to have gay sex, participate in incest, live a polygamous lifestyle, so on, is going to do it REGARDLESS of legal status, whether they are married to that person or not. Allowing anyone to form a relationship with anyone will remove any possible barriers to people creating legally recognized relationships with people, and does not necessarily mean there is a sexual relationship. For instance I could marry a friend of mine in order to help her get insurance for her child or to take care of her if she had a long-term illness where she was not fully coherent, and did not want her parents to enforce their wishes(like, keeping her on/off life support against her wishes), or to jointly own property between us.

The fact is that these days there are more relationships that need to be legally recognized and enforced and taken into account in court than just “parent and child” and “husband and wife”.

Now you will argue that marriage should be between a man and a woman in legality what it is in the bible, a spiritual relationship for the purpose of childbearing, and that taking that away removes the specialness of it, so on.
While it would be great if only people who were truly in love and people only got married to have kids and everyone had one mommy and one daddy, we live in the real world.
In the real world, we have 55 hour marriages, we have seniors getting married who are infertile, we have shotgun weddings of 16 year-olds who then divorce at 19 and fight for the rest of their lives over the illegitimate children. We have spousal abuse, adultery, battered wife syndrome, golddiggers, people who get married because they are terrified of dying alone, and spousal murder to get out of a messy, costly divorce.

What would me amenable to everyone, regardless of beliefs(as again, we live in the real world where not everyone is Christian and we can’t force them to become so) is if the word “Marriage” was reserved for something recognized by the CHURCH, and civil unions were available to everyone legally recognized as a sentient being, anyone who holds rights can establish a relationship with anyone they don’t already have one with for the purpose of supporting and sharing resources.

He responds

Icy,
The debate over gay marriage is not just about sex. It is about whether we as a society will agree to abandon the belief that the institution of a one-woman, one-man permanent union (called marriage) is a foundational institution for society. Redefining marriage to mean any newly created relationship between two persons is about as arbitrary a redefinition as I can imagine.

Most of your examples of “the real world” are viewed by most people, including most Christians, as also immoral. Bringing up such things as golddiggers and spousal murderers is totally irrelevant to the state’s role in sanctioning marriage. The state can legitimately deny persons the right to marry someone of the same gender, or multiple persons of the opposite gender, etc., even though it cannot prevent people from getting married for less than honorable reasons.

Your example of infertile seniors getting married is also irrelevant. I have not claimed, nor would I, that persons cannot marry unless they have the potential and intention of producing offspring.

I respond

But we arbitrarily redefine marriage, among other things, all the time!

Women: Not property
Interracial marriage: OK
Divorce for a good reason: OK
Divorce for no good reason: Also OK

And that’s just marriage.

But my point is that your argument is faith based. While this is PERFECTLY FINE for your own morals, what you teach your children and to talk about on Sunday or here on your own blog(not really here to change your mind, just challenge it) it’s not really sound for policy.
I’m not sure what the foundational institution for society is, because there are several important words you have to intricately define before you claim what it’s foundations are.

What society? Western society? If so, what kind? Capitalist?

For sake of argument, since we live in here in America and are talking about such, we’ll use our present set of circumstances.

There are plenty of people for whom marriage is not an option, nor is it a desired one. I’m not talking about people who can’t seem to stick to one partner, but people who pursue their careers(not just for money, but doctors and politicians), love to travel too much(ever met an old biker?) or are simply celibate. Catholic priests, for instance are never to be married, at least not to a woman(Married to God I hear quite a bit from them) as are nuns. Are these people just as responsible for destroying society?

Yes, there are not as many of them as there are gays or other people who might wish to marry someone other than a person of the opposite sex for whatever reason, but the number of these people when compared to the population at large is also insignificant(the word insignificant used mathematically in this case).

But here is a case that I think would satisfy your needs.

Government should abolish marriage altogether, as there are no benefits a infertle one man one woman marriage can provide that a gay union can’t(we’re going to go by current research done by independent researchers here) and thusly the benefits should be nullified.
Civil Unions should be the only recognized form(the ‘arbitrary’ definition used earlier for marriage will do) of legal union that can artificially create a legal relationship between two humans.
Marriage, as it originated in the Church, should be controlled by the Church. Anyone wishing to have a marriage in the eyes of God can do so using their own faith community, and it can be settled there, between the couple and God.

This eliminates the need for secularists to complain about the separation of church and state, eliminates the protest of unfairness by exclusion by homosexuals, and puts full control back in local, community churches where pastors can counsel couples to make sure they are ready, and it can be a family event, bringing back the sanctity and morality of marriage without the need to make accommodations for people who are not part of whichever community performing the ceremony.

This is the primary reason behind the separation of church and state. The state should form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty for all citizens of the United States Of America. It doesn’t NEED to be an extension of the church, the church itself can take care of that. People who aren’t going to follow it weren’t going to in the first place, let them go their own way.

These were made in the span of about a day, so he did not respond (I assume he had other blog posts to get to.)