Marriage used to be arranged by the social group for the purpose of procreation, that is, for the purpose of bolstering the population of the social group. I'm sure this was directly adaptive. I believe something happened inside of this. That it just turned out that the monogamous partnership was very beneficial to the individuals involved. Natural selection could promote monogamy if it was adaptive (for the genes, not the individuals) by plugging it with psycological rewards. Maybe this is what we experience as "love". The fact that we think we're looking for something very special to explain love, because it's so very special to us, should make us skeptical of explanations that are more than mundane.
Anyway, marriage today seems to be about the individuals, and I like the trend. Religion doesn't have to be involved. For some reason the govornment does, which I find irritating. I don't know why it has to be treated any different than any other leagally binding contract between private parties, like a handwritten IOU. If the private parties want to make a big ritual deal of it or involve their religions...whatever. The govornment should stay out of it until the contract is taken to court. I think the way it is is a residual from the past, when marriage was not about the individuals, and should go away.
It is not unwarrented, or prejudice, to ask ourselves, as a society, whether same-sex marriage achieves the same benefits of monogamous pairing - but studies show that there is not much difference in the happiness or well-being of gay couples compared with straight ones. Also, there seems to be no statistically significant variation in the way childeren turn out. (Childeren of same-sex marriages do not, BTW, show any more likelyhood to become homosexual adults as the childeren of more traditional marriages.)
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Originally Posted by InfiniteNow
Define what you mean by "Cause," as I see you've used a capital "C," so you appear to be positing a priori some designer... some cosmic dictator... some idea which I personally dismiss as a silly remnant of our neocortical and social mechanisms.
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Silly, but universal and world-dominating. We are the exceptions, my friend. Not unlike homosexuals.
