"It is not for the State to keeo a register of relationships where no offspring will ever occurr and call it marriage. "

Philo are you married?

Are you planning to have more children within that marriage?

If you are married but unlikely to have more children within that marriage would you agree that by the claims you make your marriage is no longer important and should be cancelled by the government?

I'm with those who think that the government should get out of the registering marriages business but while they are in it there should not be discrimination based on the sexual orientation of consenting adults.

R0bert

Robert

Completely agree. Really nice to agree on something.

Philo makes no allowance for married heterosexual couples who do not plan to have children.

I'm just amused by Philo's claim that 'marriage' is a scientific term. It makes me think of the little old lady who was puzzled when one of her two dogs got pregnant. It was explained to her that two animals of the same species and different sexes would normally engage in coitus if permitted to. "What!?" she said, outraged, "But they're not even MARRIED!"

This is an emotive subject for many people for a variety
of reasons. Each society views its own patterns of marriage,
family, and kinship as self-evidently right and proper,
and usually God-given as well. If we assume that there is
only one "right" form of marriage, then naturally any change
will be interpreted as heralding the doom of the whole
institution.

However, it is therefore important to recognize that there
is an immense range in marriage, family, and kinship patterns.
Each of these patterns may be, at least in its own context,
perfectly viable, and above all, that marriage, like any other
social institution must inevitably change through time, in our
own society as in all others.

It's therefore not a question of "if," but "When," as far as
same-sex marriage is concerned in this country. It should either
be voted on in Parliament - as a conscience vote - or have a
Referendum and let the nation decide.

Loving Bonds between people is not marriage. A mothers love for her Child is not a marriage and Government has no need to record that loving bond. However the Government has a responsibility to record that mother has a child and she is responsible for it's welfare for the security and benifit to the whole of that Society.

Marriage is more than love it is an exclusive celebration of the sexual design of gender, and it is recorded by the State so anarchy and disorder does not reign. Humans resemble the divine for principle and order rather than the lower animal instincts -"if it feels good".

Philo,

"Humans resemble the divine for principle and order rather than the lower animal instincts..."

Humans have construed a notion of themselves as representing principle and order - attributes of the divine. The reality, however, is that they exist at a crossroads between the two realities.
So much of human behaviour is guided by instinct that it is necessary for us to construct social mechanisms to accommodate the incongruities. How else would we intellectually digest the fact that our instinctual need for sex - no different from other mammals - is not a shambolic regression, but something "sanctified" by a higher order