Atman, If only we where all whiter than white like yourself!!

Marriage redefinition is a non-solution to any quest for community. It says instead 'we give up' on any notion of the common good, and will replace it with mere adult desire.

There are very great costs.

If we are sovereign 'i's with nothing given in the order of things that truly unites us then we require a massive state, an arch 'I' to police and mediate between us – a thing greatly desired by the state, its experts and functionaries. That they have worked out their way to survive should be nothing to us, it is human and the nature of power. But their way cannot mean liberty to us, for it would leave us naked before Leviathan state, and defenceless to every conceivable conscription into its further Triumph.

'Out of the marriage-business'? Where they meddle in divorce and family law yes. They have almost destroyed it. But the solution isn't exit it is renewal and return to what marriage is.

The idea of contract maybe the only one the liberal state wants 'i's to use (delegitimises non-liberal groups in society – their competition) but the language is for so-called ‘free’ markets. These are only truly open when commerce between voluntary subjects to trade can decline the terms or price demanded for entry into binding — constrained in time and place, and therefore able to be “hedged” with insurance — a contractual relationship.

Marriage is a covenant not a contract precisely because we cannot know the constraints of time and place and attach price or terms in advance. The bond is one-ended (unconditional, lifelong, exclusive fidelity) and cannot be hedged.

What unmarried cohabitors, polyamorists etc attempt is to hedge before price discovery (illogical of course, such a calculation can’t be done if you don’t know the value of the polynomial expression you seek to optimize). We know all this. Our society has tried it. Our children and extended families are paying the massive premiums on our parents’ failed hedge. [Krishan]

Using the state to reduce ALL Australians' marriage to mere contract, or to two (that number cannot hold) genderless adults, is to have a lie reflected in our law, and to have ALL Australians pay the social costs. Privatised benefit for the few, costs are socialised.

The abolition of marriage means the abolition of Australian democracy, the liberal market-state will be thereafter unreachable to this polity.

Nisbet's 'The Quest for Community' is where a liveable future lies.

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/05/multiply-your-associations-and-be-free/

“Marriage is neither a conservative nor a liberal issue;
it is a universal human institution, guaranteeing children
fathers, and pointing men and women toward a special kind
of socially as well as personally fruitful sexual relationship.
Gay marriage is the final step down a long road America has
already traveled toward deinstitutionalizing,denuding and
privatizing marriage. It would set in legal stone some of the
most destructive ideas of the sexual revolution:
There are no differences between men and women that matter,
marriage has nothing to do with procreation, children do
not really need mothers and fathers, the diverse family
forms adults choose are all equally good for children.

What happens in my heart is that I know the difference.
Don’t confuse my people, who have been the victims of
deliberate family destruction,by giving them another
definition of marriage.”

Walter Fauntroy-Former DC Delegate to Congress,
Founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus,
Coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march on DC

Dear McReal,

<<except religion is >50% politics>>

This saddens me a lot, that religion receive such bad reputation. I cannot blame you for this error: as there is no smoke without fire, it seems that some religious groups and leaders forgot what religion is all about, thus you are watching them and believe that what they do is religion. It is not.

Dear Martin,

Nobody, I believe, suggested to abolish marriage, only to pry it away from the state's dirty hands. The state is a secular institute, based on violence and with no spiritual credentials. Nothing stops people to marry in churches (and other religious institutes) before God, as ever. In any case, it's the heart which counts, not the piece of paper!

A very good opinion on the gross hypocrisy, double standards and intellectual vacuousness of the Greens. If they truly support their own warped idea of "marriage equality" then they will have to support polyamorous "marriage" or else they'll be unambiguously logically inconsistent. The fact is marriage equality already exists. A man can marry any woman he wants and a woman can marry any man he wants. What the Greens and the pro-SSM lobbyists are doing is REDEFINING marriage. Good work on exposing the hypocrisy of the Greens!

I am treating this article, and most of the resultant comments, as a joke. (Funny, if it wasn't so serious.)

Please do whatever you like in your own bedrooms and cesspits, as long as it is between consenting adults (physical and mental age 18+ preferably), and leave the principles which are the foundation of genuine marriage alone. This is Australia, not Sodom and Gomorrah. Thankfully.

Prefer some other 'libertarian' culture? Please, feel free, don't let any decent folk hold you back. Well, what's stopping you?

>>Secretary of the "Family Council of Victoria"<<??

This must be one very strange organization (or just very badly misnamed) - perhaps like the 'Forest Protection Society' (or some similar title), which is actually the lobby group (or spokesperson) for the loggers of heritage-listed old-growth forests.