My solution for years has been for the government to get out of the marriage business entirely. Marriage should be a purely religious ceremony, and we can establish something like a civil union contract law to handle issues like joint ownership of property, child custody, and inheritance.

That way anyone, gay, straight, or polygamist can get the legal benefits of marriage, and they can find a religious institution willing to conduct the religious ceremony.

There's no reason to change the name of the legal agreement known as "marriage" to "civil union" other than to pacify the superstitious.

[1] It is worth noting that while there are passages in the Hebrew/Christian bible that advocated "one man, one woman" marriages, there are plenty of examples of "Biblical heroes" who had multiple wives (David and Solomon come to mind).

Same sex couples adopting is a very sensitive issue, I am lucky to have friends who adopted (in Germany we have less than 10 men couples having adopted), the boy is now a bit less than 2 year old and I am still wondering if this is a good thing or not. This is why I completely understand that the general population can react strongly as even me, being able to play on the floor with the little boy, being a rational kind of person and seeing the little boy smiling and happy, can still have some doubts.

Every one is allowed to have a baby. But, oh dear, if somebody wants to take care of a kid that has no parents.

Personally, i dont think religious people are fit parents. Should i now campaign against religious people taking care of children?

Or maybe, just maybe, people should just give the freedom to others they expect for themselves.

I have no moral authority over any one, nor does any one have a moral authority over me.

Why is it that fascism is allowed to flourish, as long as the fascists call it a religion. And how is that fair towards the 1% of religious folk that are actually religious? ( actually religious == using religion to guide your own lifechoices, instead of using it judge/oppress others and play god)

For example, if the child was adopted by an abusive alcoholic then this is a case of the terrible neglect and perfidy of the state... even though gobs of people are naturally born to abusive alcoholics and taking them away would usually be regarded as an instance of the terrible neglect and perfidy of the evil, bureaucratic state.

The state must have a perfect track record in order to be merely tolerated. Otherwise, it will be overthrown. So by our own stupid irrationality, we ensure that the state is irrationally defensive. If the state could solve a problem 90%, but 10% are still left over, that 10% becomes the awful perfidy of the state, so we create an environment where the other 90% are completely ignored because at least it's "nobody's fault."

Can these differences be found within a same sex couple? Most likely, also not in the same way as woman/man. Is it better 2 loving fathers instead of living alone in an institution, definitely.

Non exceptional same sex couples with children is a fundamental change in the society, we need to accept that it will take time for this change to become accepted.

The kid will still grow up in a same-sex household. He/she will still think of themselves has having two dads or two moms. The only thing you're denying is the ability for the other partner to sign their permission forms, visit them in the hospital, or be officially recognized as a parent by the government and society.

It will take time for the rules of the society to adapt to the changes in the society.

I have a friend who was raised by a same-sex couple. One was a biological parent, and they had to go through huge complex legal procedures to compensate for inheritance rights, adopting the child and others as he was a stranger-in-law to the non-biological parent that raise him.

I have a lesbian friend who has 3 biological kids of her own. The only social issues they've faced are from other adults being uncomfortable with it. But it's a bigger issue when those people vote against civil marriage and deprive those kids of legal protections kids of hetrosexual marriages have.

Realizing that this affords some protections for those cluelessly love struck who could be left with no legal recourse should the relationship dissolve, it still pisses me off quite a bit that I need permission of any sort from the government to practice a religious rite.

So long as this is the case there will be opposition to any legally allowed civil marriage that doesn't follow the traditional definition.

Do you want to have this fight every time a new type of union wants the legal protections of marriage?

My solution is a compromise, the alternative is to have this fight for the next few years, and then a few years later start it all over again for poly-marriages.

>There's no reason to change the name of the legal agreement known as "marriage" to "civil union" other than to pacify the superstitious.

Since the "superstitious" make up a large percent of the country you might want to find a way to "pacify" them.

If we can compromise so that the majority of people are happy and no one's rights are violated, where's the problem? Unless you just don't want to "pacify" the "superstitious" out of spite.

Yet there it is, in black and white, in every statutory code in the country.

The statistics I was able to Google up show support for gay marriage at 43% of the US and against 47%. So it's not like it's some tiny percentage who are for it, and it's not even a majority who are against it.

Personally, no, I don't want to have this fight. I also don't want to have to fight about evolution being taught in schools. Unfortunately some members of the population render this a necessity.

No, we write our laws based on reason and justice, but there is nothing wrong with taking people's preferences into account as long as those preferences don't violate the rights of other people.

Assuming you were for a single payer healthcare system. Would you object to a president pushing for a single payer socialized healthcare system, but calling it something else in order to appease people who hate the word "socialized"?

A word only has a meaning insofar as a culture decides to use that meaning. So yes, the preferences of individual members of the culture taken collectively are by definition relevant to the debate.

So hopefully we can agree that the current definition of a word is solely about preference.

We are having a problem coming to a consensus over the meaning of the word "marriage."

Group A says it means "one man and one woman" Group B says it means "two people" Group C says it means "any group of consenting adults"

If you are in Group A, using the word marriage in a legal document, in the context of "any two people", means you think the government sides with the preferences of Group B, and vice versa.

Two (or more) sides disagree, so a compromise is proposed--we don't use the contested word, we create a new word that everyone can agree on.

Imagine if 2 groups argued about the definition of the word "planet."

Group A says a planet "is spherical" Group B says a planet "must clear its neighborhood"

The governments starts using the Group B definition, but almost half of the people still use the Group A definition.

In order to avoid a huge fight we compromise and come up with a new word that includes objects that fit both definition, solely for use in legal documents.

The name of the civil contract is obviously important to people on both sides of the issue. As you've pointed out, many people have trouble distinguishing between the legal definition and the religious one. Those people are no doubt going to be upset that the government is telling them they aren't "married" anymore, but only "civil unioned" ("civilly united"? There's another problem, it doesn't verb well).

Even if this compromise would be acceptable, the government has no business rewriting laws to cater to certain religions. That's pretty much exactly the thing America was founded NOT to do. We even wrote it into the first amendment. Should we make a law making it illegal to draw pictures of Mohammed, since that offends some people's religious sensibilities?

That's a good point, like I said it's just a proposal and would need to gain public support.

> Should we make a law making it illegal to draw pictures of Mohammed, since that offends some people's religious sensibilities?

Nope, because that limits the speech of the drawer.

However if a large group of people objected to the government's use of the word crusade to refer to say some kind of program called "crusade against hunger", I wouldn't have a problem discussing changing it from "crusade against hunger" to "fight against hunger"

The key difference is no one's rights are being violated, the government is just changing a word.

If the government stopped referring to policemen as policemen and policewomen, but started using the term police officer that's fine with me. It doesn't affect what I do. It doesn't stop me from calling them policemen and policewomen.

There is no reason for the state to name anything "marriage" or give any special recognition to the concept.

We have such a contract. It's called marriage. If you look at the law of marriage, there is nothing in there that's predicated on there being a woman and a man, and there is nothing in there that is specific to religion. In the United States, which never had ecclesiastic courts, marriage has always been a strictly civil, contractual legal construct.

The problem with a civil union contract is that the law is full of references to marriage. E.g. in the law of evidence there is the principle of marital immunity, which is that spouses can't be forced to testify against each other in criminal trials. Do you want to go back and rewrite all of that?

Thus the old laws applied to everyone,without a need for someone to go at them with eraser and ink.

That's right. Proponents of civil union say that everyone (including heterosexuals) should be granted civil union, and somewhere in the anals of law it should say "civil union is legally equivalent to marriage".

You know that's pretty easy to fix, right?

There may be other problems with his proposed solution, but it's trivial for a legislature to say "where we said BAR in the past, we also mean BAZ."

That some religions have a "marriage" ceremony is orthogonal. What makes you married in the legal sense is the marriage certificate you get from the government. Any ceremony is just for show. What the US Government defines as marriage is purely a civil thing.

But the immediate question, regardless of whether government should be involved in marriage or not, is whether we should pass laws to cause the government to treat this institution that it is involved in in a fair and equitable way (and reject laws that would enshrine unfairness).

Marriage should not be a purely religious ceremony. It should be an individual's choice, consent of both the partners.

I don't agree that a religious institution HAS to validate/conduct a religious ceremony. Again, it should be left to the individual.

I don't. However ~50% of American's don't support it.

At the same time I don't think there is a legal reason to ban gay marriage.

This is a proposed compromise between both sides.

As far as I can tell, the only feasible way that we get there is by the states allowing same-sex marriage, and then the FedGov comes along for the ride, followed by FedGov doing a ''mutatis mutandis'' change in law to talk about civil unions.

As a consumer buying a product, there are lots of things I value besides just the product I'm getting. I care about service, etc. Not being terrible people is also something I value, and I don't see anything wrong with reflecting that in my purchasing decisions.

I'm opposed to dragging the vitriolic "I refuse to work with you because you're a Publican/Democrat/conservative/liberal/bleeding-heart/homophobe' behavior into a wider arena of life. I'm friends with and work with Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, etc. and that's a GOOD thing. I don't want a world where our political differences mean we can't function as a society. I can't get my haircut there--he's racist or sexist or homophobic. No, he's a normally-okay dude who cuts my hair well.

I don't know how to best express this. Jon Stewart kind of talked about it at the Rally for Sanity when he mentioned how we don't cut people off for having a McCain bumper sticker.

Step one is to realize that being homophobic doesn't make you "terrible people". Three hundred years ago pretty much everyone was racist, sexist, and homophobic, but were in general as decent people as we are today; they just had some terrible beliefs, and terrible behaviors that came along with those beliefs.

Are they really decent if they were racist/sexist/homophobic? Just because people were nice to others that didn't fit into their hatepool, I do not feel that makes them generally "decent". No matter what time period you look at, there were people that didn't agree with these "social norms". I would call the such occurrences "decent people".

I understand your message about party differences/etc. but I feel there is a line that can get crossed between differing perspectives and hateful behavior. The latter should not be tolerated, in my opinion.

Let's say you were in 1880's Deep South and thought black should vote. Do you think there's no problem if people in town refuse to sell you goods for that? Is a Hollywood blacklist just something to shrug off.

Obviously you should not be forced, as an individual, to purchase goods or services from someone else you don't like. Going any further than that and society can strangle minority viewpoints almost as oppressively as government. If I refuse to deal with you, or anyone who deals with you, or anyone who deals with anyone who deals with you, than we move away from a pluralistic society towards one where the group most in charge at a given moment wins.

What if I think that marriage should be defined religiously by a religious institution rather than legally by the state? I guess I am "incorrect" for not supporting state-recognized gay marriage. But how was I supposed to determine this before you came along to tell me?

Marriage, in the legal sense, just a particular type of contract, long recognized because of how commonly people wanted to enter into a particular type of economic arrangement. It is non-sensical to think religious institutions should have any say in defining this type of contract, any more than they have a say in defining the contracts that pertain to, say, residential leases. Should religious institutions be able to use Biblical scripture to argue that implied in any residential lease is a warranty that the landlord will have running water, etc? Of course not, that is the exclusive domain of the secular courts. The marriage contract, being no different, should be treated no differently.

You hear other people's opinions and you make up your mind. It's painfully obvious that there isn't an objective repository for this sort of thing; the whole notion of 'inalienable rights" is rather recent and fluffy to begin with.

>What if I think that marriage should be defined religiously by a religious institution rather than legally by the state?

Yet we live in a society where marriage is legally defined. It's fine to work against abolishing the institution of marriage, but if that's the case witholding that legal definition from an arbitrary segment of the population becomes a petty argument over semantics.

If I have any objection here, it's to the notion of "socially correct." What is the epistemology of social correctness?

From the response it seems there is none, there are just people who are applying force. I don't agree with that.

Welcome to every social interaction ever. You come up with an argument and you get people to agree with it.

Re: "socially correct", do you agree with anti-miscegenation laws? If not, why? The argument for gay people is virtually identical.

[1] Granted, the Civil War Amendments were imposed under martial law, but calls for the repeal of the 14th Amendment are rare.

Thank you.

This is why it infuriates me when you see lolbertarians going about how you shouldn't care. Of all people they should be the ones to recognize why this sort of stuff… matters.

That was stupid, this isn't reddit.

libertarians do believe that market pressure should be used instead of government coercion. You'll definitely find plenty of them who do support a boycott of chick-fil-a.

At the same time there are other libertarians who don't support a boycott because they believe that people are entitled to hold opinions that differ from their own.

There is a difference between boycotting people because they have different opinions, and refusing to give money to a company who turns around and uses it to actively support anti-gay legislation.

The CEO of Chick-fil-A is like 90. If he was just homophobic, sexist, etc, in private, it wouldn't make news anywhere.

I respect anyone's choice to do so.

However, for me personally I see trying to convince other people to share your opinion as just an extension of having an opinion in the first place.

I wouldn't vote for a law to ban gay marriage, but I'd still patronize a business who's owner did.

Unless that owner was doing something more than peacefully trying to coerce people to vote for said law.

Obviously being a massive funder of a campaign against equal rights for the gay community is totally a neutral position which in no way harms gay people, but pointing out the fact that they've been doing it? Why, that makes gay people big meanies who are attacking this nice family for no reason.

As far as funding campaigns that support their moral views as a "private" company, why is that so bothersome? They don't get out in front of a microphone in the public media and state this fact every time they get the chance. Although Bezos seems to think this is a good idea.

Gay right=Civil right=Yeah right

What is Focus on the Family? Or the Family Research Council? Eagle Forum?

>>> And many people might agree with you they are "big meanies" looking for a fight.

They are "looking for a fight" to be fought in the public square, in legislatures and courts, over what many of them consider to be a legal injustice. Is this not the intended form of democracy?

>>> As far as funding campaigns that support their moral views as a "private" company, why is that so bothersome?

Why is it so bothersome to point this fact out? If they do not wish to be injured by the information, then they have the power to make it false.

>>> They don't get out in front of a microphone in the public media and state this fact every time they get the chance.

The fact they were (previously) not very vocal about their views negates them how?

>>> Although Bezos seems to think this is a good idea.

As is his right? Just like the Cathy family has the same right?

>>> Gay right=Civil right=Yeah right

Disagreement does not require a dismissive attitude. I could just as easily denigrate your opinions and your position, but that benefits no one.

When you bring your views into the public square by funding public campaigns to espouse those views, you can't complain when people react to those views.

Chick-fil-A did something far stronger than simply get on a microphone in the public media and argue a particular viewpoint. It spent millions of dollars trying to affect legislation.

"good people" is not among them.

> Chick-fil-A will never agree with their moral stance

There's the problem. Morals are neither here nor there. You can believe that homosexuality is wrong and still recognize that allowing homosexuals to enter into a civil marriage contract is just and right. I think lying is wrong, but I wouldn't try to advance legislation that prevents liars from getting married.

Nobody is mad at Chick-fil-A for being bigoted in the privacy of their own home. They're mad at Chick-fil-A for their actions and for how they spend their money on bigoted campaigns.

The big deal is that someone that is "famous" said publicly that he doesn't support gay marriage. The LGBT movement, "tolerant" as they are, just can't have that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._virginia

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... "

There is also a significant difference between "not supporting" something and campaigning to prevent anyone from doing it. I "don't support" tax-exempt religion, but I'm not giving money to a lobbying group to try to end it.

Whereas I, a progressive libertarian (free-market progressive?) believe that worldview to be inconsistent with libertarianism, hence lolbertarian.

Companies, governments, organizations, institutions at large all exert and respond to their own social pressures and cannot be considered in isolation thereof.

Another is the fact that pretty much every apparatus ever erected for the enforcement of "correct views" has ultimately been corrupted and abused.

Please let me know where to find the official canon of "correct social views", as I am anxious not to end up in the Gulag accidentally.

It is also relatively common in America for corporations to donate large sums to the re-election funds of officials already in power; they are often then granted concessions in their favour (e.g. George W Bush was very good to the oil industry, Barack Obama is friendly with coal companies).

While both forms are legal, people are generally more morally comfortable with the first than the second form.

Just to make it clear they can't actually donate large sums of money directly to the candidate's campaign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Supe...

A not-unimportant percentage goes to political consultants.

In financial markets it is well understood that brokers' fees, though a tiny fraction of transactions, are an important driver of marketing activity. It is widely thought that these fees create dangerous conflicts of interest requiring extensive regulation.

The possibility of similar forces in other arenas is not so carefully noticed.

PETA's goal is not to bribe politicians into enacting pro animal legislation, but to change how people look at the issue or when most people agree with them they can then inform politicians of this so politicians will then 'toe the line' so as not to offend voters.

1) Awareness raising. A lot of people are partially or completely unaware of what laws are on the ballot, what initiatives actually mean and what the stakes are.

2) Driving turnout. This is actually probably much more important than #1. If you look at the statistics, the percentages of eligible voters who actually vote in elections is not incredibly high. Money can be used to ensure that people who are sympathetic to your cause are properly registered to vote, know where their polling places are, even literally give them transportation if they don't have it. For this issue, to take an example, it is extremely likely that college students are overwhelmingly for gay marriage, but a lot of them are not yet registered to vote, or are from out of state and haven't re-registered in Washington, so this kind of money lets pro-Marriage organizations have a heavy presence on campuses getting kids registered in the state, telling them where they need to go and when to vote, possibly even renting busses or vans if polling places are inconvenient for campuses.

But yeah. 'Round here laws are products, and marketing is a huge part of how they're sold.

People with deep but irrational convictions, can be pulled to rationality or vice versa.

I'm not saying this specifically about PETA, but that's generally how campaigning works.

I'll take care of the rest.

If people (Gay or Straight) want to have a corporate merger and agree to co-mingle assets, then they should have that right. If they want to join a church that bestows upon them the title of "married" then they should have that right, provided they meet the church's definition or requirements to achieve "marriage." If they don't agree with the church, they can start their own or just not have a church. The government should not be the arbiter of religious beliefs except in cases when religious beliefs directly compromise another's rights (i.e. honor killings.)

It is entirely about the legal construct of marriage. By your own words this is the governments place as people are using their religious and moral beliefs to restrict others civil rights.

That doesn't mean all traditional ideas of marriage have been the same, they haven't (any more than cultural ideas of homosexuality or gender-bending have been the same). That doesn't mean you aren't free to choose or make your own religion. but doing so doesn't remove the historical context and social meaning of "marriage."

Having me use a certain terminology with regard to your relationship (let alone believe certain things about your relationship) is NOT your civil right.

It isn't the government's business to provide financial incentives for "marriage" either.

You should be able to have any person you want to visit you in the hospital, however. Could be your horse trainer, why should it matter?

Here in NC the amendment to ban same sex marriage passed with something like a 20% margin. That was despite anti-amendment spending beating them by 2:1 [1]. People have fairly deep convictions about these things and I don't think a campaign commercial is going to sway anyone's opinion.

[1]http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/story/11021903/

Also, in presidential elections liberals and young people have a lower turnout. Maybe the same applies here and many liberals and youth in favor of same-sex marriage wouldn't be heading out to vote without either some coaxing or raised awareness. Some people probably have weak opinions or are unsure: I think awareness would push these people toward voting in favor. Just guessing, but it really doesn't sound all for naught to me.

I'm sure that the CEO also gives of his own money to the same and possibly more groups, but that is his money to do with as he pleases. It makes him look like a bigoted ass, but that's his choice.

Since it's a privately held company, I don't really see much difference.

Also Chick-Fil-A has been well known for decades, as a company that supports biblical principles. I live in Georgia where they're from, and I don't think they'd be nearly as large as they are today without the brand loyalty that support has built them.

Besides, it's not like people are saying the Chick-Fil-A president can't say what he said. The story here is that a lot of people are deeply unimpressed with his statement, and are effectively enacting a de facto boycott (not allowing expansion into communities that disagree with his stance).

It's perfectly fine for this to be discussed, and besides you possibly not identifying with the complainants (as you point out in another comment here), I don't see why you object to it. (Note that I am mainly responding to the parent comment from another user: "I find it odd that what people do with their own money gets so much attention".)

No, Amazon is a publicly held company, not solely Bezos' property (I doubt his board would even let him do the same thing).

Chick-Fil-A is for all intents and purposes is the "personal money" of the owners, so I see no difference in what someone does with his money or his property.

I'm fine with the boycott. I don't support it, but I respect it.

What I'm not fine is this.

>not allowing expansion into communities that disagree with his stance

If a local government denies building permits to a business because it disagrees with the owner's speech, that is a blatant first amendment violation. Far more knowledgeable people than myself have said the same thing. I really doubt the lawyers for whatever municipality plans on banning them will allow that to happen.

If the people of a local community don't want Chick-Fil-A there, they won't patronize it. Chik-Fil-A's market research will probably find that out and they won't build there.

As for rights, try to keep in mind the key issue here is a debate on a specific right as well. What people are debating is changing the law, changing your rights. If local governments feel a certain right or something they desire to be considered a right is being infringed on or threatened by a company, then it's no longer so black and white.

It's easy to rant about most people's priorities when it comes to the information they consumer (trivialities over real news) but the saddest thing to me is that the universally positive causes that public figures/companies etc. donate huge sums of money to (charities & the like) usually go unnoticed as a result.

It's funny/depressing to go at certain forums/imageboards and see people CONSTANTLY attacking the same thing, every day again and again. If someone defends them (or attacks their own side) they are obviously gonna get angry.

It's not as if they just spent it on cars and caviar.

They mean "to fight for" the referendum, right?

Edit: for more clarity in last sentence.

As for the second part - the risks of incest to the children of such couplings (who certainly can't consent to being the product of incest) are well known, and it's worth a few laws and a heavy dose of shame to prevent such outcomes.

There are lots of ways to prevent a child from being born. Still... any two consenting adults... brother-brother... brother-sister... sister-sister... should all be allowed to "marry".

Redefining marriage is the radical point-of-view.

Given the variety of marriages in the Bible (A guy, his wife, and his wife's handmaiden, etc), who's redefining anything?

The redefinition is ultimately dictated by changes in material conditions which lead to proximate changes in people's interests.

If the definition includes all those, then there isn't really a definition worth the name.

Even just in the Jewish traditions related in the Bible, there are many very specific constraints. They just don't happen to be the same as "Leave it to Beaver." But maybe the Bible is too much of a button-pusher example.

To understand, just consider one of the traditional definitions - let's take the Hindu one. It isn't at all true that there is no traditional Hindu concept of marriage, there is quite a strong one and there are a great many things it excludes. These exclusions are meaningful.

The same thing is also true of many other traditional definitions. Although some traditions are a little different from others. Now as the world urbanizes many traditions are being mushed together in industrialized settings and they are forming their own new standards. So same-sex marriage is up for grabs and we see the current fight.

However, there is no traditional or modern tradition which includes marriage with dead puppies.

Some things are in, others are out - there were many definite concepts but each is changing and many are merging.

Humans take a very long time to develop so they can have big brains later, but they are not strongly monogamous. (And there are some cross-cultural commonalities like taboos on incest and sex with animals or dead bodies.)

In the brutish default state of things, human women pay a high biological and personal cost (and face significant risk) to get pregnant, bear children and (typically) take on the lion's share of childrearing. After ~18 years they are considered past their prime. And it is typical that they have less social power to begin with and are subject to issues such as rape.

So they are relatively much more vulnerable to hit-and-runs. Since everybody is related to women and probably cares about some of them, also because too many hit-and-runs hurt a society, there is a tendency to support protective measures such as socially recognized marriage. Especially in an environment of scarcity, like what people have normally faced.

It can also be argued that this has good benefits for men, many of whom really do like to settle down with less competition and fighting and maybe also raise some kids. There may be social benefits from supporting and developing men like this. They are more likely to build things and keep the law rather than joining roving rape bands (like you see in some other primate species).

So you also have a lot of arranged marriage, and not necessarily any romance. And if there is a pretty picture it is the one of civilization. Because reality is pretty grim and civilization is a big pile of techniques for managing that grimness most of the time.

Now in the industrialized world we have so much more than mere civilization, including a lot that bears directly on sex: birth control, low maternal and infant mortality, less scarcity, public schools, etc. And just plain fewer kids and more free time. So the risk and cost is both absolutely lower and somewhat more equal across genders. So the linchpins for support of a lot of traditional institutions are removed. And you see that sexual freedom increases naturally, not because of any principle, while opposition is really due to some principle or nostalgia more than any clear practical concern. And divorce is more acceptable and there is much more emphasis on having fun and fulfilling a pretty picture.

So the nature of relationships is greatly changed, more like a kind of romantic and economic partnership lasting 2-7 years. So many other changes too.

Now in this newer kind of relationship, it is really not at all hard for those same behaviors to map to homosexual relationships (which have always existed, just typically in different forms from traditional marriage) because so many of the differences have attenuated. And so many social groups give the same recognition to both and correctly recognize that it is not destroying society in any real or practical respect, except that some people are unhappy because of traditional ideas.

But we have strong taboos (with various practical and biological foundations) about things like childsex, animalsex and deadsex. Even if you are in support of those, they will not be accepted the same way ever. And the concept of a marriage commitment between a man and a corpse, or a man and a child he is raping, will never have parity with the concept of a long-term commitment between equals. And I strongly doubt that incest would ever be accepted outside of specific cultural forms.

Polygamy has been practiced all over the world for a long time and is of course also something which is often mentioned casually in the Bible, so there is really no argument other than that it is not traditional in our mainstream culture and we have corporately decided we don't like it.

As for mother and son, I personally find it distasteful, but why on earth should I care? Seriously? Are mother/son couples going to rise up and enslave us all, forcing us into incestuous mother-loving relationships?

Why should politicians define the specifics of social arrangements? Laws should be a platform upon which people of all persuasions can develop their own ways of relating.

Like an open source approach to social relations.