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Marriage was created as a means to regulate the sexual behavior between men and women in order to produce children and to ensure that those children would be with their own mother and father. Marriage has been essential to the survival of every society in order to produce each subsequent generation.
However, what many social conservatives refuse to acknowledge is that the meaning has changed significantly over the last hundred years due to political and technological advancements.
Women's rights: When women were allowed to work they had a viable alternative option to child rearing.
No fault divorce: When divorce became easy, married people could separate for their own happiness regardless of the negative effect it would have on their children. Remarriage after divorce (serial marriage) has become a viable option which means that children are no longer ensured to be raised by both their biological mother and father.
Paternity tests and Child support: Men no longer have to be married to a woman to be financially obligated to a child he has with her. Marriage is no longer necessary for paternal obligation.
Welfare: Welfare provided state benefits to unmarried mothers, so that they could raise their children without the biological father.
Child welfare: Parents who fail to provide for their children can now have their children taken away by the state and placed in foster homes or adoptive homes. This increases the likelihood that children will not be raised by their biological mother and father. Furthermore, adoption has demonstrated that children can be raised very well by non biological parents, particularly if they are adopted in infancy.
Contraceptives and abortion: These gave women control over their own reproduction and so they could have sex and not end up tied to a man by pregnancy. Marriage became a matter of choice rather than a necessity.
In vitro fertilization: With this, heterosexual intercourse is no longer even needed to produce babies. Using sperm donors or surrogates, even people of the same sex are able to have children.
Parenting: As social science has advanced our understanding of parenting, it has become repetitively clear that same sex couples can raise children just as well as opposite sex couples. There is no scientific support for the notion that children raised by a man and woman are inherently better off than those raised by parents of the same sex.
As you can clearly see. Even without same sex marriage, the meaning of marriage has changed dramatically. For better or for worse, in the modern age, heterosexual intercourse, procreation, and child care are not necessarily conjoined.
Same sex marriage is not a radical redefinition, but simply an attempt to reconcile the legal definitions of marriage with its modern meaning which is now far removed from its traditional heritage. Social conservatives would like to return back to the old meaning but unless you can roll back all the aforementioned advances, it is virtually impossible. The meaning of marriage will continue to change.
There have been a lot of consequences as a result of these changes, including increases in broken families, single parents, foster families, adoptive families, and step families. The basic unit of society continues to shift from the family to the individual.
Nobody knows what will happen to marriage down the road or what the consequences will be to a modern society. It cannot be argued that the state has an interest in maintaining an obsolete meaning of marriage just to exclude same sex couples. To do so would simply make the institution into a means of discrimination and would do nothing to serve society. Keeping same sex couples from marrying does not return marriage to a meaning of regulated procreation and child welfare and it will not stop the meaning of marriage from continuing to change with social and technological advances.
However, what many social conservatives refuse to acknowledge is that the meaning has changed significantly over the last hundred years due to political and technological advancements.
Women's rights: When women were allowed to work they had a viable alternative option to child rearing.
No fault divorce: When divorce became easy, married people could separate for their own happiness regardless of the negative effect it would have on their children. Remarriage after divorce (serial marriage) has become a viable option which means that children are no longer ensured to be raised by both their biological mother and father.
Paternity tests and Child support: Men no longer have to be married to a woman to be financially obligated to a child he has with her. Marriage is no longer necessary for paternal obligation.
Welfare: Welfare provided state benefits to unmarried mothers, so that they could raise their children without the biological father.
Child welfare: Parents who fail to provide for their children can now have their children taken away by the state and placed in foster homes or adoptive homes. This increases the likelihood that children will not be raised by their biological mother and father. Furthermore, adoption has demonstrated that children can be raised very well by non biological parents, particularly if they are adopted in infancy.
Contraceptives and abortion: These gave women control over their own reproduction and so they could have sex and not end up tied to a man by pregnancy. Marriage became a matter of choice rather than a necessity.
In vitro fertilization: With this, heterosexual intercourse is no longer even needed to produce babies. Using sperm donors or surrogates, even people of the same sex are able to have children.
Parenting: As social science has advanced our understanding of parenting, it has become repetitively clear that same sex couples can raise children just as well as opposite sex couples. There is no scientific support for the notion that children raised by a man and woman are inherently better off than those raised by parents of the same sex.
As you can clearly see. Even without same sex marriage, the meaning of marriage has changed dramatically. For better or for worse, in the modern age, heterosexual intercourse, procreation, and child care are not necessarily conjoined.
Same sex marriage is not a radical redefinition, but simply an attempt to reconcile the legal definitions of marriage with its modern meaning which is now far removed from its traditional heritage. Social conservatives would like to return back to the old meaning but unless you can roll back all the aforementioned advances, it is virtually impossible. The meaning of marriage will continue to change.
There have been a lot of consequences as a result of these changes, including increases in broken families, single parents, foster families, adoptive families, and step families. The basic unit of society continues to shift from the family to the individual.
Nobody knows what will happen to marriage down the road or what the consequences will be to a modern society. It cannot be argued that the state has an interest in maintaining an obsolete meaning of marriage just to exclude same sex couples. To do so would simply make the institution into a means of discrimination and would do nothing to serve society. Keeping same sex couples from marrying does not return marriage to a meaning of regulated procreation and child welfare and it will not stop the meaning of marriage from continuing to change with social and technological advances.
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