Quote:
Originally Posted by Frieza_Prexus
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Why is marriage regulated, but friendships are not? Anyone who submits that marriage must be redefined must first answer this. Only then, can the discussion move forward.
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you've already provided this answer. because society has an interest in promoting unions that would produce more desirable societal outcomes. primarily, because marriage tends to improve outcomes for the children that typically accompany romantic relationships. where society can turn such a relationship into a quasi-permanent union with shared parenting responsibility, it is best served facilitating that union.
all of these reasons double for gay marriage, with the footnote that gay couples are not capable of producing their own offspring. you're unnecessarily concerned with optimization. unless you contend that gay couples can otherwise be convinced to enter heterosexual unions, society would be best served by facilitating gay unions as an optimal association for gay couples -- just as we are best served by facilitating unions for infertile couples. a gay married couple would form a union that produces a home with mutual parenting responsibility, a home that theoretically should produce greater benefit to society through improved parenting capability as opposed to single gays, unmarried gay couples, or foster homes. where you have a gay couple, you cannot have a straight couple. you can either have a married gay couple, an unmarried gay couple, or two single homosexuals. for the same reason a stable nuclear family is preferable to a single parent, society should prefer a stable gay union and should thus promote it via marriage
friendship is a different animal altogether. creating a legal union of friends would not produce any tangible benefit to society. most friends do not live together and do not produce or adopt children together. friends do not produce a single household or family unit
as for 3 people that love each other and want to create a lifelong union and come together to form a single family unit... that would very much be an exception, and not one worth redefining marriage for. but as homosexuality is estimated in nearly 10% of the population, it cannot be rightfully ignored