Bingowings said:
It may change society but as to whether it would be a change for the worse is something that can only be subjectively assessed after the change has happened.
As a social mechanism you have to ask what is it for?
How does it function?
To be clear, I assume you're talking about stripping morality from civil marriage (not gay marriage per se). I think a trend toward a more amoral culture is inherently bad. To be able to finally conclude that is the case after the fact would be too little too late. If becoming a more amoral culture is just fine and dandy, then no harm no foul I guess, but I can't blame those who do care from trying to maintain the moral veneer on marriage.
It clearly isn't just about producing children otherwise we wouldn't allow people who are for some reason incapable of producing children to marry.
That's not exactly true. There are competing legal and moral concepts. If a purpose of marriage is to provide greater stability for children that regularly arise when a man and woman convene (and do not regularly arise when people of the same sex convene), it is not required that the law be very strictly tailored to that purpose. But due to the fact that gay couples do raise children, it is argued that gay unions should fall under the same umbrella to help ensure stability for their children. This doesn't disprove that a purpose of marriage is the raising of children, it adds a dimension that was not previously considered.
Further, notions of privacy would prevent the government from investigating one's child-bearing potential. At least in American law, for purposes of inheritance, the law recognizes the possibility of a fertile octogenarian (though it is generally seen as a fiction).
Still, my argument is that there also is/should be a moral component to the societal conception of marriage.
The law as it stands in the UK is that same sex civil unions have all the civil and legal benefits and responsibilities of a heterosexual civil marriage but can't call themselves married which seems daft as they are legally joined in the same way.
I agree. A federal court in California just ruled that it is daft to grant all the same rights but withhold only the title.
As for extended marriages to groups of people larger than two I have no problem with it ethically but it may be a legal minefield without well thought out legislation.
My question is what is the government's interest in sanctioning a multi-person marriage? I agree it would be a legal minefield, as adoption, custody, taxes, inheritance, etc are all oriented toward a union of two people - but it is not simply because that is how marriage happened to be defined. There is a broad moral sense about the family unit which is supported by these various laws.
I can't see why the act of civil union can't be extended to people who don't have any desire to have sex with each other, like siblings.
That way if siblings living together in a shared home would have the same protection in law if one of them died as a husband and wife would.
I agree with this. I think civil unions are a good way of extending rights to those who - for whatever reason - do not want to marry but do have a person with whom they share expenses, responsibilities, etc.
Of course, civil unions would be legally distinct from marriage under this scheme. I do not support state-sanctioned incestuous marriages.
I also have no problem with childless siblings adopting children as a couple.
If Donny and Marie have a platonic relationship and simply want to raise a child together, I'm gonna think it's weird, but they have the freedom to do that. Do I want to go down that slippery slope toward sanctioning incestuous relationships? No.
When the gay marriage debate first erupted, there were all kinds of claims by opponents that it would lead to a slippery slope where society would allow polygamous, incestuous, bestial, and vegetal marriages. All of these claims were dismissed as hysterical. But it does seem to me that more and more people are shrugging their shoulders at the prospect of polygamy. I'm not making a value judgment that it is bad that people change their minds, I'm pointing out how a claim used to paint opponents as nuts ends up being acceptable and even possibly a feature of an updated definition of marriage.
You go a long way toward saying siblings should be given all the rights and privileges of marriage. Granted you only speak for your own view and might have held it for quite a long time. But if marriage becomes nothing more than an amoral contract, I see no bar to sanctioning incestuous marriages.
There seems to me an unhealthy obsession with sex in most societies and not enough focus on social structures.
Again, to be clear, I'm not arguing about the merits of including gay unions under the rubric of marriage. The family IS a social structure. I think every culture is fully entitled to express moral choices in the course of their governance.
