Debalic wrote:
Yes! Exactly! See, the emphasis should be on *raising* children, not *making* them. Children will be made, regardless of anything anybody says or does. Raising them properly, that's what is important.
Sure. And by far the best way to maximize the odds of children being raised properly is to maximize the odds that those making them are married prior to doing so.
I'd also amend your statement a bit: "Children will be made
by the sexual activity of couples consisting of one male and one female, regardless of anything anybody says or does."
Which is precisely why the institution of marriage is directed at those couples. Once we recognize that as a group, if they are engaging in sexual activity, they're going to procreate, whether they are married or not, or whether we want them to or not, or even whether they want to or not, so the best way to maximize the outcomes of the children that will inevitably result from their sexual activity is to do everything we can to encourage them to marry prior to procreating. The fact that we don't know which couples will procreate and which will not doesn't matter. We know that the set of couples consisting of one man and one woman is the entire set of all procreative couples. Thus, it makes sense to target marriage at that group.
It does not make sense to target marriage at a group larger than that because once you do that, you've made marriage not about procreation, but about the couple themselves. And once you do that, you can no longer justify any limits to the couples that should qualify. Why include two non-procreating males and not two non-procreating siblings? Why exclude a parent and a child from marriage? They certainly love each other, right? And it would certainly be beneficial for one to inherit the others property without having to pay taxes. Any combination of people can join together to raise children, and any combination of people can adopt children, and any women (regardless of relationship to anyone else) can choose to artificially inseminate herself, but only a couple consisting of one male and one female can create a child as a natural consequence of sexual activity.
I just think that too many people are viewing marriage as a benefit conferring status to be fought for and not as a social tool designed to help alleviate a potential social problem (children born without sufficient parental support, specifically in the form of biological fathers). When viewed as the former, it's some nice thing to try to get and to argue that by not getting it, you're somehow being left out or discriminated against. But when viewed as the latter, it's something to be applied to the group of people that cause the problem we're trying to solve and makes no sense at all (and is arguably counter productive) if applied to anyone outside that group). The group that causes the problem is the same set I mentioned earlier: Sexually active couples consisting of one male and one female.