The problem of your view is that you really see marriage as being about the people who marry. In reality it is largely about their children. Even gay marriage is seen as a way to pave the way to allowing adoption / surrogate parenthood and thus enabling gays to have full families, including children, although not necessarily biologically theirs—at least that is part of the story, although using it as a vehicle for social validation, and some weird US-specific rules like hospital visits play a role too. While childfree and old people marry too, this is broadly the same as eating ice-cream vs. actually eating a meal. The meat is missing. Which does not mean that it should not be allowed, because just why not, but it does not mean either that it is valid to see marriage as an institutionalization of a relationship of adults and see how could we make better institutions for this? But marriage is not for adults primarily. For adults the whole thing is simple—ideally everybody should be able to marry but people who are dedicatedly childfree should probably realize there is no good reason to. There is hardly any good reason for two modern, income-earning people to pool resources unless one of them is becoming a housewife / houseman and really the only good reason to do that ever is children otherwise you are just being a maid. The primary thing marriage is optimized for is children. I predict most gay couples who bother about the whole marriage thing intend to adopt or have a surrogate child. Otherwise there would be little point to.
Gay marriage does not hurt children but abolishing marriage would. It would be one step towards making it less and less sure that children will always have their mother and father, and their property, around.
The answer to poly marriage is that first figure out how to sort out parenthood and then you will have your answer. If you would see it as an “it takes a village to raise a child” kind of setup, sure, just consider it a group thing, everybody pooling their property for the sake of raising children, no matter who is the father or the mother. I think Robert Heinlein proposed this in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress in 1966. However if you think even in a poly thing primarily the two biological parents would be responsible for the children, things could really get a bit complicated.
In short, I think you really need to update the view that marriage is about two or more adults for some weird reason wanting to make their love institutional. No, it is primarily about children, own or adopted, although due to the social customs associated to it it is often used for other purposes, but that is not the main purpose.
I should add that in the wedding ceremony where my wife and me are from this is halfway explicit. After the promise we gave our parents flower / wine thanking them to raising us—this can be seen as the childhood being over (at 34 it was about time) and now we are going to take up the mantle of becoming parents and continuing the family lines. During the dinner and party, people kept asking when do we plan the first kid. So the generic mood was “nice you guys chose to reproduce” and not something like “nice you guys made your love public”. I don’t need to make my love public and I could do that without wearing a ridiculous penguin costume...
Gay marriage does not hurt children but abolishing marriage would. It would be one step towards making it less and less sure that children will always have their mother and father, and their property, around.
I don’t understand why. Possibly you misunderstood me: I was arguing for abolishing legal marriage, not abolishing the cultural institution of marriage. I am not legally married to my wife, we have a 5 year old son and everything seems to be ok.
It does not make much of a difference. In the jurisdictions I am familiar with, cohabitation esp. with a child is practically interpreted as marriage, such as in case of separation commonly acquired property gets split etc. Let me ask, precisely what aspect of legal marriage you object to? Because there is a chance your cohabitation already has that legally.
The problem of your view is that you really see marriage as being about the people who marry. In reality it is largely about their children. Even gay marriage is seen as a way to pave the way to allowing adoption / surrogate parenthood and thus enabling gays to have full families, including children, although not necessarily biologically theirs—at least that is part of the story, although using it as a vehicle for social validation, and some weird US-specific rules like hospital visits play a role too. While childfree and old people marry too, this is broadly the same as eating ice-cream vs. actually eating a meal. The meat is missing. Which does not mean that it should not be allowed, because just why not, but it does not mean either that it is valid to see marriage as an institutionalization of a relationship of adults and see how could we make better institutions for this? But marriage is not for adults primarily. For adults the whole thing is simple—ideally everybody should be able to marry but people who are dedicatedly childfree should probably realize there is no good reason to. There is hardly any good reason for two modern, income-earning people to pool resources unless one of them is becoming a housewife / houseman and really the only good reason to do that ever is children otherwise you are just being a maid. The primary thing marriage is optimized for is children. I predict most gay couples who bother about the whole marriage thing intend to adopt or have a surrogate child. Otherwise there would be little point to.
Gay marriage does not hurt children but abolishing marriage would. It would be one step towards making it less and less sure that children will always have their mother and father, and their property, around.
The answer to poly marriage is that first figure out how to sort out parenthood and then you will have your answer. If you would see it as an “it takes a village to raise a child” kind of setup, sure, just consider it a group thing, everybody pooling their property for the sake of raising children, no matter who is the father or the mother. I think Robert Heinlein proposed this in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress in 1966. However if you think even in a poly thing primarily the two biological parents would be responsible for the children, things could really get a bit complicated.
In short, I think you really need to update the view that marriage is about two or more adults for some weird reason wanting to make their love institutional. No, it is primarily about children, own or adopted, although due to the social customs associated to it it is often used for other purposes, but that is not the main purpose.
I should add that in the wedding ceremony where my wife and me are from this is halfway explicit. After the promise we gave our parents flower / wine thanking them to raising us—this can be seen as the childhood being over (at 34 it was about time) and now we are going to take up the mantle of becoming parents and continuing the family lines. During the dinner and party, people kept asking when do we plan the first kid. So the generic mood was “nice you guys chose to reproduce” and not something like “nice you guys made your love public”. I don’t need to make my love public and I could do that without wearing a ridiculous penguin costume...
I don’t understand why. Possibly you misunderstood me: I was arguing for abolishing legal marriage, not abolishing the cultural institution of marriage. I am not legally married to my wife, we have a 5 year old son and everything seems to be ok.
It does not make much of a difference. In the jurisdictions I am familiar with, cohabitation esp. with a child is practically interpreted as marriage, such as in case of separation commonly acquired property gets split etc. Let me ask, precisely what aspect of legal marriage you object to? Because there is a chance your cohabitation already has that legally.