For one thing, because women have historically needed the protection and support of men, and children are the natural issue of heterosexuals and need the protection of parents...However, the basic natural situation is only one of the reasons for heterosexual marriage but it's a big one. The idea that two MEN need any kind of protection of each other is ridiculous. If that's the case then ANY two singles of the slightest acquaintance should be allowed to form some kind of mutual protection society.
Firstly, homosexual relationships are natural. They occur across cultures.
Second, since there are cases of homosexual unions that contain children (ie. one or both mothers keeping their children while living with their partner or possibly in future cases through adoption by two male partners), then both partners should be allowed the same benefits through marriage that heterosxual couples are afforded. Your idea that "protection" is applicable to the case on whether they should recieve benefits is a red herring. If on the other hand you imagine that the "protection" for married couples is in the form of protection from losing their shared apartment, then of course two men or women would need that protection, just as hetero married couples do. Shared insurance and other benefits are definitly applicable in today's society and something that should be afforded to homosexual couples through marriage just as it is for married hetero couples. You have nothing to lose Faith, while they gain some very important legal benefits. (and off-topic but---> in any case women historically, brought home approx. 70% of the food nutrition before the advent of the industrial revolution so it was the men who needed them...)
Where did I say that marriage is a "legal contract?" It's a cultural institution. Some cultures don't require any kind of legal anything. It's just a relationship that is recognized as exclusive and binding in the eyes of the community. This may or may not be officially legally established.
Marriage IS a legal contract, whether you said it or not. If it wasn't a legal contract their would be no need for Judge Judy of Divorce court, nor divorce lawyers, etc. It is also a cultural institution whether you agree or not. Regardles of what other societies or communities make of homosexual marriages (and many countries allow such marriages) the issue here seems to be the United States and it's discrimination of such marriage unions. It is both.
I don't care what kind of contract homosexuals make between themselves, but society should not be required to treat them as a married couple. This is a CULTURAL thing. They do not deserve some kind of CULTURAL RECOGNITION of their unnatural relationship, benefits, percs etc.{...}But that's between them alone, and it does not involve the whole society, the rest of us, in being forced to regard their relationship as normal or right or anything of the sort.
It is not JUST a cultural thing. It is also a legal contract. Society is not going to be harmed by allowing two men or women to get married, just as it isn't harmed by allowing some man to marry a woman. Your insistance that it is unnatural is becoming tiresome. I have already showed you that it is NATURAL cross culturally, and therefore, just as you so succinctly pointed out about hetero marriages; homosexual marriage IS fundamental, universal, and historical. {feel free to take the wax out of your ears and blinders off your eyes and do some research about it. Perhaps read the through the links I provided before or do your own research.}
Why should I be forced to recognize or support YOUR marriage or anyones marriage then? I would have though you could give a rats hind-end whether I think your marriage is unnatural or right. I frankly could not give a hoot about your marriage so how is your marriage affecting me?
Finally, again, it is not JUST a cultural thing. It is also a legal contract. And homosexual couples in cultures
throughout history and countries today allowed and allow homosexual marriage unions.
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