Quote:
Originally Posted by Colly Wolly
It's basically this: if the definition of marriage is going to change to make a certain constituency happy, why not change it to make all constituents happy? Or atleast more than just one certain type of constituency happy?
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Marriage already changes to make its constituencies happy. In some states, marriage with a second cousin is ok. In some, first cousin marriages are alright. In others, they aren't. The age of consent for marriage varies from state to state.
The state already defines marriage. If your opinion is that any state action defining marriage opens the door to further state action defining marriage, then you should be opposed to all state action in that arena, right? I doubt very much that you are.
If the reasons for prohibiting certain forms of marriage are simply public policy reasons, then isn't there a reasonable argument that in the past marriage was only between a man and a woman based on antiquated ideas of the "good" of public policy and those ideas are subject to revision to include a man and a woman? Certainly a state could also determine that polygamy was appropriate (they also have in the past), but it doesn't necessarily follow that they must accept polygamy if they accept gay marriage.