Should Gay marriage be legal in Australia?

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Why is it that the concept of marriage since millenia and in the overwhelming majority of cultures is based on the understanding of 1 man+1 woman? That is not just religious tradition. Biology had something to do with.

Well, if we go that route, then arguably the historical institution of marriage has no less to do with cows, land, titles and children than it does with men and women. Everybody seems to conveniently forget that while marriage may have been co-opted by religious tradition, it arguably is, was, and always will be primarily an economic/social contract meant to secure assets and protect the genetic, economic and political legacy of people beyond the limits of their lifetimes. So yes, biology is involved here, but in the most abstract sense only.

Arguably modern society has already developed ways of preserving economic, political, intellectual and even genetic legacy of people that do not require 1 man and 1 woman. So why stick to that as the only possibility? We might as well go back to insisting that marriage be an "exchanging of cows" while we're at it, after all that's how people in many cultures have done it for thousands of years...

And let's not confuse marriage with procreation and sexuality, or sexuality with procreation for that matter. Marriage is a social contract. Procreation is a biological function. Sexuality is a set of psychological tendencies. The links between the three are very tenuous and have at no time in human history been perfectly aligned. We just like to pretend that in the "good old times" they somehow magically were.