Note: this post does not just address your comments, Scheavo.
I've addressed this numerous times, and you ignore it.
By the way, marriage has not always been simply about procreation. Study Spanish society in the 1500's. Marriage was a contractual agreement, like it should be today, that clearly was more about economics than child rearing. Bastards were accepted and common at that time, and they had a place in the household.
So really, your argument not only is ignoring counter arguments, but it's historically unsound.
Are you kidding? Why do you think that the institution of marriage was established and has been attended to throughout history? To get tax breaks and to be able to visit your wife or husband at the hospital circa 1500 AD? The establishment of marriage, grounded upon obvious and basic biological, metaphysical, social, and practical foundations, has
always existed to attend to the obligations and nourishing responsibilities attendant upon procreation and the raising of valuable and productive members of society. The reason for the existence of marriage is painfully obvious to anyone willing to stop blocking their ears with their hands screaming "No! No! No! That cannot be what marriage is because it doesn't conform to my irrational support of same-sex 'marriage'!" The institution of marriage was not established simply so that Janet and Bob could visit each other in the hospital when Bob comes down with explosive diarrhea again; nor as an elaborate, nefarious economic scheme to trick governing authorities into extending tax cuts and other financial benefits; nor as to grant social permission to flaunt a golden band on the ring finger or to invite a select group of easily-inebriated socialites to some fancy wedding reception in a tropical Thailand resort; nor to allow two grown men to play House together in their forties.
This isn't just some "arbitrary" or "narrow" definition of marriage. There is no "your definition" of marriage nor "my definition" of marriage. But by supporting same-sex "marriage," you're destroying the very necessity for the institution of marriage! For if to oversee the responsibilities attendant upon both procreation, the nourishment, and raising of a productive member of society are to be understood as irrelevant to marriage, then why marry in the first place? You've reduced marriage to become an "unnecessary" vestige of a "once-backwards" society; a simple socio-economic tool to be abused by all who see fit. Besides that, you're simply saying that "marriage" can be understood to be whatever the majority of people in a democracy "feel" "marriage" should be defined as. You have, in fact, opened
any redefinition of "marriage" open to challenge! So why think that
your redefinition of "marriage" won't be come to be seen as "backwards" and "outdated" by people in the near future, disgusted at the thought of being deemed "intolerant" by peers or the media for not supporting a "marriage" as absurd as that with a cartoon? After all, they wouldn't want to "discriminate" against cartoonophiles, would they? Once you have removed marriage from its foundations, you have determined that "marriage" could be understood with no basis apart from one's own arbitrary whim. So then, why think that "a binding contract between two people" is not then open to challenge? "At the end of the day, who cares?" One such supporter of interdimensional marriage could say. "Why can't they just leave it be? No one is forcing anyone to marry a comic book character if they don't want to. Bottom line: mind your own business, please." Once you have reduced "marriage" to be determined by people's opinions, you have done the very thing that I warned you you'd be doing; you're acting as if the institution has no basis apart from your own arbitrary whim and, in doing so, have exposed any attempted "redefinition" of "marriage" as open to challenge as much as the heterosexual principle. I've also (if you have even bothered noticing) made no references to any biblical claims nor theological grounds and you needn't be religious to agree with the points I'm making. Opposing same-sex "marriage" is no more associated with any sort of a "religious moral" any more than being opposed to a law that attempted to institutionalize an impossibility as attempt to repeal the law of gravity or some such nonsense as same-sex "marriage." And, as I have stated in one of my arguments
ad nauseum: where procreation is, in principle, impossible, marriage is meaningless and logically impossible. ("In principle" means "relating to the definition of" as in "not relating to particular circumstances." So if an orange happens to have a bug residing in its insides, the bug is not part of the definition of an orange; it doesn't change what the orange is in principle.) Human beings reason and make laws by means of concepts and definitions. And if one doesn't know how to operate with respect to those concepts and definitions, that individual cannot make laws. Examples of individuals who are impotent or who are infertile or past the childbearing age do not change the definition of marriage in principle because between a man and a woman, in principle, procreation is always possible. It is this very possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first place as a matter of law and government. But as when procreation is impossible, as with two males or two females, it isn't that this is incidentally impossible; it is impossible in principle!
Of course infertile heterosexual couples can marry; of course heterosexual couples past the childbearing age can marry, for, in principle (as in "not relating to particular circumstances" and as in "relating to the definition of"), between a man and a woman, procreation is
always possible
in principle! Procreation is
never possible either in principle or incidentally between two people of the same sex.