Notice that their REASONS are not relevant.

The relevant question: Now that we've allowed divorce for any reason (a radical change from tradition), why not give up rule #5, which is highly discriminatory? Notice that we do not have a rule #6: Only fertile couples can marry.

THE HAYEKIAN argument says that we should only change our traditions in extreme circumstances, because they have developed in complex ways in relation to our other social institutions, so changing them generally has complicated, unforseen bad consequences.

REPLY: Most things have bad consequences, so that's not a legitimate issue. Worse, if we took this seriously, we would never have outlawed slavery, let women vote, nor made wife-beating a crime. Tradition encourages us to do lots of immoral things.

THE PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE: It has usually been thought that marriage has a social purpose: support for children. That is why governments assign a legal status to marriage.

Since there is nothing that stops gay couples from having children (using at least some of the same methods used by heterosexual couples), gay couples should qualify for marriage.

THE CORE ISSUE: Why should the anatomical likelihood of pregnancy be relevant here? There is exactly one reason to make this connection: Natural Law and "the natural teleology of the body."

If you don't accept natural law, then ANYTHING might be allowed in marriage!

But we shouldn't connect marriage and natural law, because we don't: having biological kids together is not the reason people actually get married. We don't, after all, have fertility tests for marriage! Yet there are more sterile heterosexual marriages than there will be same-sex ones if we legalize it.

WHY DON'T WE POINT TO INFERTILE WOMEN AS A THREAT TO MARRIAGE?.

So what is the real reason we exclude homosexuals from marriage?

Because groups of young males are a serious social problem. Marriage separates young males from the "pack" and reduces their potential for violence. It stabilizes them.

With older males, a different function is important: Marriage provides mutual care-giving at a stage when most people need it. There is the partner, and there are additional "kin."

NOTHING serves these two purposes better than marriage. So why don't we want to apply these to homosexual men? Why would we want some weaker relationship?

These reasons point to an interesting consequence: Given its real purposes, divorce is now too easy to get! A responsible society would protect marriage by expecting marriage and by "complicating" divorce. It turns out that tradition had these elements of marriage right!