[Mazer]

Nah, the first paragraph isn't bad, it makes me smile every time I read it. I've asked for trouble by making a thread with two topics, so basically it isn't possible to hijack this thread because I've already sabotaged it. If I thought Ramona's scarcasm was offensive then I would have said so a long time ago. Knowing that it is a joke sets the right tone for the rest of the thoughtful post.

I think your right, marraige isn't being attacked from without. If anything it was social pressure that kept divorce rates low, and now that the pressure is gone and people are free to choose, more and more people are opting for it. It's a good sign that married couples have more freedom, but it's bad that they're using that freedom to break otherwise happy families appart. In the face of "easy divorce" I stand by the idea that nothing worth doing is easy.

I do think the institution of marraige is founded on the base desire of humans to reproduce, and religion and government have been thrown into the mix to complicate things. Card's essay suggests that in such an unnatural environment like human civilization, for children to survive childhood they must be taught how to succeed in society, and they learn by example mostly from their parents. For people who have no desire to have children marraige is a formality. For people who have children outside of marraige their offspring are less likely to become productive adults. Even in our artificial environment the laws of natural selection apply. In nature when an animal fails to bear offspring then its inferior genes are removed from the pool, but when a person fails to have children it's not just his genes that disappear but also his family history, his knowledge, his wisdom, and his cultural heritage that are lost. Many of those things may be passed on to other people, but children embrace those things, they cling to tradition and the pass it on. For many people having children is the closest they'll ever get to immortality.

So despite the fact that everyone has talents and strengths that they use to the benefit of civilization as a whole, if a person dies childless then civilization as a whole looses out. And ironically, if a parent doesn't raise his or her own child then the end result is the same. This is the basis for the idea that family is the best way to preserve culture, society, and ultimately civilization. It may sound a little far fetched, but it has obviously worked for thousands of years. I say, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

But if it is decided that we should tamper with the basic design of civilization will it lead to its downfall? That is very far fetched. Card said that rather than trying to change America back to the way it was, people will simply remove their alliegence to her. The same thing happened when the North tried to abolish slavery (I know I keep coming back to the Civil War but bear with me here) and the South decided that secession would be easier than trying to legalize slavery throughout the US. Bad idea then, bad idea now, only the present division doesn't neatly follow a geographic line. War will not happen because of gay marraige, but no good will come of dividing America into two separate cultures neither of which is truely American.

Government benefits aside, a lot of gays want to get married just so they can wear it as of badge of honor. The day you get married is regarded as the day you finally grow up, it's your official entry pass into society. People do expect certain perks for getting married, and rightly so because staying married isn't always easy and raising children is never easy. But of those 1049 benefits that marraige provides, most of them are focused on child dependants. Adoption is always a viable option for gay couples and in that case those marital benefits should be given, but without children a marraige isn't really a family, just a token of love. This the the critical question of the day and it deserves a lot of thought: do gays deserve marraige if they choose not to have children? Maybe yes, maybe no, I don't know for sure so don't put me on trial for posing this challenge.

Here's my personal anecdote. I know a gay guy who says enjoys his sex life, but in the future he hopes to settle down with a woman and raise a couple of boys; more than anything he want's to be a father. I asked him if that means he's a closet heterosexual, and he smiled and nodded. But since he's in his late 20's and his only experience with women came from a handful of bad relationships in high school, myself and others fear that he may miss the chance to be a father because he won't know how to be a good husband to his wife. I'm positive he'll eventually figure it out, but he will be an old man when he does, perhaps too old to be a good dad. Right now he's doing what he feels is natural and it's interfering with his long term goals.

I think this little story this has more to do with premarital sexuality than homosexuality, but it speaks to the widely held misunderstanding that love+sex=marraige. Many straight people think this way too, and it's wrong. I think that for my friend to have a successful marraige he needs to forget about sex completly, it's the only way he'll be able to love his wife. I know I'm revealing my own misconceptions here, but would a gay couple mary if they had never had sex with each other? I doubt it. For gays (as well as many straights), marraige is primarily about the sex, and love is secondary.

I don't know why but I keep thinking of the lyrics to U2's One. You say love is a temple, love the higher law. You ask me to enter but then you make me crawl.