So...

[ShadowHM]

Marriages are meant for a husband and wife who wish to devote their entire lives together and raise a family. It is nearly a definitional arguement. The fact that many people can get married who really shouldn't be able to is not a valid excuse to allow even more people to get married.

I would like some elaboration on this point, please.

Would I be correct in concluding that you are saying that my widowed mother and her widower beau should not marry, since neither is now interested in having more children? Or when a couple is proved to be infertile (and who refuse to consider adoption) that their marriage should be dissolved?

Indeed, it would be better if the government were out of the marriage business altogether, and church leaders were more demanding in the counseling processes they require prior to marriage.

I can see an argument for this, if all the laws that concern married people were to be thrown out. Laws about the tax-free passage of one person's goods to the surviving spouse come to mind as an example of how the legal system is involved in the marriage business. Or was this a corollary of this other comment?

But if it were it really possible to completely separate the legal concept of marriage from the religious/social concept, I would far rather allow homosexual marriages of the former type than those of the latter.

It does seem to me that is what others here have advocated - that all the government should cover is 'civil unions'. leaving the religious and social ramifications of 'marriage' to the individuals concerned and the social/religious groups to which they belong. Why is that problematic?