Canada has WMDs

[Occhidiangela]

Everything aside, the *central* purpose of marriage is the care of the children. With the large percentage of children without marriage and the large percentage of marriage without children, that concept covers nearly nothing.

I'd put that 'central' purpose a bit differently. The central purpose is to define, within a given social setting, pairings who will procreate and ensure the longevity of the tribe/social group. (See the aristocratic group of Europe for a few centuries, as an example, which like other small tribes led to inbreeding and all of its wonderful side effects.) The need to define the pairings, which is driven by biology(man and woman) and by social norms, would be at least be to prevent conflict over who mates with whom in a given setting. That conflict is played out in high schools (even if only who dates whom) every day.

Varied cultures had varied ways of approaching that, to included both monogamy and polygamous models. The core purpose of clan continuation, or social group/family continuation, is the one common thread. Pass on the blood.

How that model applies to a non-breeding pair (woman-woman/man-man) is somewhat dubious, until we look into the well accepted social structure of fostering or adopting children born to someone else. Same gender pairs can live together, just as man-woman pairs can live together, without marriage and get along just fine.

But given your point that the baseline models are a bit outmoded, certainly in America at present, then what would be the point of codifying as marriage a pairing that is not derived from the very same customary roots? It strikes me as a contradiction, or an attempt to continue to confuse the evolution of marriage, which is a social custom that has been passed down with gender roles embedded. SInce the Lee Marvin Palimony case, which I referred to, I would argue that marriage is irrelevant as a model for either man-woman pairs, Man-Man pairs, or Woman Woman pairs. At least in California.

The most significant break in the wall of custom came, IMO, when same gender couples could legally adopt children. THAT is the stone, IMO, that starts the rockslide of eventual social change. The same-gender two parent family unit is already a reality in the US, though I am pretty sure that it varies by State.

The justification for change can be founded on that premise/precedent alone, IMO, with a lot of reasonable arguments pro, while the argument of 'the Canadians are doing it, we shoud to cater to their habits' has no merit.

Some of the pieces to the puzzle are already in place. I suspect that the change, like the 55 MPH limitation change, will eventually take place state by state. Part of the process will be the weeding out, by attrition, of folks who are unwilling to accept that change.