Is Mise, Yuyutsu and others on this recent thread have pretty much covered everything needed to nullify your argument.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15495&page=0

If you disagree with the points made by Yuyutsu, then you really need to ask yourself whether marriage as you see it facilitates vulnerable females over the age of consent being forced into heterosexual monogomous relationships.

The same laws that prevent this from occurring also protect other types of relationships. The Marriage act is simply a registration of one type of relationship by the government. the Social Service argument is also null due to other laws such as defacto etc.

..I challenge anyone here to make an argument why government should regulate marriage.
Posted by Stezza, Friday

The challenge was to make an argument; I succeeded.

Oh yes, I'm sorry.

Congratulations for making a terrible argument. You win the grand prize!

Zoe Brain,

Your mind-reading capability is not working. If society had created an institution called marriage to describe the union of two people of the same sex, I would see no reason whatsoever to demand that the union of two people of opposite sexes be called by the same name. I would expect it to have its own word.

There are lots of different types of relationships in our society. One such relationship is that of a man and a woman committed to each other for life to the exclusion of all others. The word that describes this relationship is “marriage”. The relationship of grandparents and grandchildren is not described as a marriage. The relationship of two life-long friends is not described as a marriage. A saucepan is not a brick. Jumping up and down is not flying. A meat-eater is not a vegetarian.

Chris, One could also describe marriage as a union for life of 2 adults who love each other.

Apparently, Christians used to stone adulterers, but we moved on from that.
We can move on to legal gay marriage too, and absolutely nothing will change for you.

Cris C,

It is interesting that you use the "meat-eater" "vegetarian" analogy to try and make a semantic argument against same sex marriage. As if people wouldn't understand what you are talking about all of a sudden.

This specific term is interesting because the word "meat" originally meant "all food", and apparently changed meaning over time to mean what we call "meat" today.

I wonder how many people starved to death when the meaning of this word changed? Won't somebody think of the children!