I know you feel that way about marriage. I’m not sure I agree, though I get your point. It made sense to me when I did it 
You do realise that dictionaries are updated every year or so to reflect colloquial usage?
They’re not the arbiter of semantics, and certainly not the arbiter of ontology. Their modus operandi is to report on how people are observed to be using words, in current year.
I suspect this is going to have precisely the opposite of the intended effect: far from making the law more “inclusive”, more and more heterosexual couples are going to start opting out of the redefined version of marriage, on the basis that it no longer means what they believe it means.
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We operate on concepts and definitions. We make laws and decisions based on those concept and definitions. We’ve clearly made laws and decisions on the concept and definition of marriage as between man and a women. So without the religious context of it, I don’t think it’s irrational to think marriage is between a man and a women only. It’s not a coincidence that by principle that it’s onlt possible to make children between a man and a women. Yes, I know there are some incidences where one or both party is not able to make children. But it’s never possible for same sex couples to make children. We didn’t make marriage originally for men and women to discriminate. We made it for social utility I believe.
The utility of marriage is basically men are pigs, we can make as many children as we possibly want in our lifetime. Women can’t. Perhaps it’s good we have marriage as a social institution because it basically forces men to commit to something to women and raise children together. We know children of single parents are most susceptible to jail, substance abuse, poverty, etc.
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Sure, language changes, that was my point all along. I would also support that dictionaries are, for most people, arbiter of semantics.
Depending on your definition of “making children” it is possible, and more importantly it is definitely possible for same sex couples to raise children and build a family. The line of thinking you present is not applicable to today’s society.
History is so heteronormative!
I’d like to see that entry before the gay and feminist revolution took place.
Really? Everyone damn well knows what the definition of making children is here.
Let’s see. I consider a couple of women making use of sperm donation to give birth as “making a child.” Do you?
Did the 2 women make the child literally?
You’re making my point for me. they need a man to make a child from his semen. By definition it’s still a man and a women.
Outside of the religious context the best arguement for the institution of marriage is procreation and the social responsibility of men and women of that. Men can make as many children as he pleases in his life time without marriage, while women can not. This is not good socially. Single parents usually are stuck in poverty. Children of single parents are statistically more susceptible to continuing poverty, going to jail, substance abuse and many more.
What’s the point of marriage?
Please don’t tell me love, that’s not been the case until recently.
The fact remains that
It is possible for single parents and same-sex couples to have children. You do not need marriage to physically conceive a child.
Also, it is arguable that
are more important goals in the institution of marriage as conception. Though again, in today’s society that’s not a sine qua non.
I’ll leave the conversation with this: whether you want it or not, things are changing. Deal with it.
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Let me be clear. I’m very for same sex couples to receive the same benefits as stright couples. I think it’s only fair. But I’m also not big on the government being the authority of marriage.
I’m simply arguing against changing the definition of marriage. And possible social implications of that.
And I just explained to you why this is not great socially if we all just did this.
You also don’t need to be married to be together for SAme sex couples. You keep ignoring the purpose of marriage I brought up.
There’s obviously reasons why it’s usually better for two parties to be married to have children.
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I think we can say this 1,000 times that some people will still need to read it again… just for ignoring it again.
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So what are you guys majoring in?
Oh, Finsky. Again with the “in a minute” stuff? How did you get so spoiled?! Don’t you realize it takes me 10 minutes just to read this thread??? 
Anyway, here I am some 20 hours later, and others have said most of the things that needed to be said, so there isn’t much left for me to lecture you about. 
Still, I’ll try. Because I care. 
All kinds of things can be construed as beneficial to the state. Happy people tend to be more productive than unhappy people, for example, and despite the horror stories, plenty of people are made happier by marriage…
But when you describe marriage as being for the benefit of the state, are you really trying to say the state desperately needs more humans? (Can we pull @hsinhai78 out of whatever wormhole he got stuck in, so he can finish explaining that one to us?)
…aaaand so did various other states, just for the record. 
I’m not well read on asexuality, but I’m willing to consider that it’s an actual thing.
Modern Britishism of the day. 
Are you sure that’s still the case in Vietnam today? Either way, the same kind of law has been known to exist in common law jurisdictions, and the tendency has been for it to be repealed because it goes against the social consensus (more or less) of what it’s reasonable for the state to interfere or not to interfere with. You know, the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.
Any law could theoretically exist, just as any kind of human behavior that can be imagined could theoretically exist, but if you want to scare people with realistic legal oddities, you need to try a bit harder than telling people the state is going to force them to marry their roommates*. “Negotiable cow” is far more plausible than that.
(*I know, some Muslim countries – I won’t get started on that.)
Your concern would be legitimate if it weren’t fallacious. It’s “the slippery slope” all over again. In brief, removing a prohibition doesn’t impose a significant burden on the state, but giving people assistance to achieve something “at any cost”) would impose a significant burden on the state and therefore on society. You’re still thinking in terms of modern British “the peasants are coming for our tax dollars!” hysteria. 
Are we still talking about marriage? Ask a doctor, tax consultant, statistician etc. about the benefits. 
A: Darling, will you marry me?
B: I used to want to marry you, but then our gay friends got married, so now it’s meaningless.
A: Okay whatever.
People have been cohabiting without marrying even though they could since before the modern trend of legalizing gay marriage was considered plausible. By what mechanism do you propose gay marriage would change this?
If more states follow the Austrian example of allowing civil partnerships for all (even though they were invented for gay couples as a compromise, before gay marriage was legalized), then yes, that’s plausible, because the concept of marriage as a one-size-fits-all convention is hard to justify, so there’s an argument to be made for allowing “marriage lite”. But in the absence of separate rules for civil partnerships, your argument doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.
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Who’s this “we”, Andrew?
Taiwan’s Civil Code is based on European law, yes, but it didn’t suddenly invent the concept of marriage – it just gave a western-style legal framework to it. Did that destroy the non-Judeo-Christian concept of marriage? Is traditional Chinese marriage dead now, because polygamy got banned or something? Better tell all those foreigners who shelled out big bucks for “traditional Chinese weddings” that they got scammed and really just had Judeo-Christian weddings! 
News flash: gay divorce been going on since roughly the same time that gay marriage was legalized. 
(Edit: not sure if you were talking specifically about Taiwan there…)
The practical effects of citizenship have changed. So have the practical effects of marriage. Open work rights, special rules for residency and reduced taxation, etc. – how much do those modern details align with “traditional” marriage?
Wait – are we still talking about “Judeo-Christian” marriage? 
(Edit #2: “men are pigs”? Why are you bashing men? 
)
You’re inadvertently using some of the same arguments as pro-gay marriage activists.
If not government, then what? Leave it up to the church? Okay, so who gets to be recognized as a church? 
And so on…
Pop quiz: what’s the national language of Singapore? (I’ll explain later…)
You don’t need to be married to be together. No-one’s suggesting that. But you do need to be married to enjoy various rights that married people enjoy – tax, residency, etc. Would you be happier amending all laws to make civil partnerships and marriage 100% identical except in name? That’s a bit like the notion of amending all laws to make PR status and citizenship 100% identical except in name. Whether it would be good or bad, though, it’s not going to happen. There will always be something that distinguishes them in practical terms (whether we’re talking about marriage or citizenship).
It does bring up some other questions, like are single people being discriminated against? and so on, but I think that’s another debate…
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There’s an easy mental trap here: think back to how you saw the world in your childhood and contrast it with weird 
that goes on these days; project your personal recollection onto humanity in general. It’s a coping strategy that we all use to some extent, but it’s still a trap, because humanity is diverse, and history has seen lots of changes.
Cars have been around for thousands of years. They have not always had four wheels. They were not motorized until very recently, in the grand scheme of human history. What we commonly understand now as a car is actually not the traditional car of our ancestors.
And yet, it still does the job of getting people from A to B, which arguably is what matters in the end.
[insert meme of Trump saying “WRONG”]
- Historical cases of gay marriage are not easy to find, but they do exist. The definition of marriage has not been completely the same across cultures and throughout history – e.g. was this or that emperor “married” to his concubines? – but even formal, legal marriage of same sex commoners in Christian Europe has been found in the records.
- The concept of “marriage” has also been used figuratively for a long time. Consider, for example, how nuns are “brides of Christ”.
Does it make you feel repressed?
Suppose there are two educational systems in a country. System A can grant (let’s say) “degrees” and has had a monopoly on that right for centuries. System B can only grant (let’s say) “certificates”. Degree holders enjoy certain rights that certificate holders don’t, even though people in general care less about the distinction than they used to. Some people even admit they think certificates are better for various reasons and want System A to grant certificates as well as degrees.
One day, the state decides to allow System B to grant degrees. 
It’s not that people with System B educations are pretending their pieces of paper are actually issued by System A. Some B-educated people are perfectly happy with their plain old certificates, and some A-educated people want their system to grant certificates too, but some B-educated people want full degrees, because they believe they’re missing out on stuff, and they objectively are.
So now…
X: Hi, I’d like to apply for a job here.
Y: Great, do you have a degree?
X: Yes, I have a degree from the University of B.
Y: But that’s not a real degree. It’s a certificate.
I wonder how you would finish that dialog…
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For anyone who missed it, the “Persons Case” was around 100 years ago…
It is the case of Morocco.
Yeah, but the nature of these two unions is quite different, right? And it doesn’t really seem to be that we haven’t evolved yet or reached the technology for fully understanding that concept of take it to perfection. Well… OK, maybe with robots…
Wait, is Trump going to reveal us that rules have exceptions?
I know what you mean, but that’s a bad example. Many words can be used in a metaphorical way and that doesn’t change the nature of the original concept. Right?
Actually I’m not too exposed to direct feminism, thanks God, but it’s like getting closer. And it’s annoying.
Let me put another example (that probably won’t help because you might see it very differently):
Woman with mustachio: I’m a man
Me: Sorry, I’m not the person you think. @yyy is having breakfast now
Woman with mustachio: But look at me, I feel I’m a man!
Me: where did I put my keys?
Woman with mustachio: Where did you say @yyy is?
Me: Sorry, what where you saying?
Woman with mustachio: if I were born as a man, physically, and then I had cut my penis, and we had it for dinner together, the German media would love us
Me: I wish I had more money
Woman with mustachio: A couple of guys met on internet and one went over the other guy’s place and then…
Me: That thing shouldn’t be spelled mustachio, it should be moustache.
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For me, I would think it makes more sense. My opinion are that marriage my definition is between man and a woman. That doesn’t disqualify people of same sex being together and having the same rights as the institution of marriage for heterosexual couples.
But I would still put forward the problem of one of the reasons why marriage as a state institution exists is to have children. And yes I know many heterosexual couple don’t. The incentives you give are mostly given because it extends to your children and helps the difficulties of having children. The government absolutely has an interest in people having children, Taiwan and other places gives you tax breaks and subsidies for having children. I think this is an important part of marriage, the future generations.
Perhaps if the government has to partake in controlling marriage and allowing ssm. Having children and adopting children for ssm should be what’s giving couples most of these benefits.
But as you see, that’s another reason I feel not so great about the government being the authority of marriage. They seem to have to get more and more involved in our lives.
I’ve not once said the church. Or any church or house of worship. If I believe that a marriage is covenant between a man and a women in front of god. Than the church as no authority either. I’m talking about the religious or at least general value of marriage. Not the legal contract of 2 people given by the government.
I think you are smart enough to understand figure of speech about the evolutionary drive of men to pass down genetic material. You’ve also completely ignored the utility of marriage as an state institution. And the title of the thread I made is why do men get bashed for no reason I think of a man has 30 children with different women and take no social responsibilities of that. Seems reasonable to be bashed due to the social consequences.
I’m saying what they had was clearly not the same concept of citizenship we have now. Not even close, it’s debatable if we even got the concept from the Greeks. It’s like saying pasta is noodles. Technically it’s kinda true, but we obviously know they are different. Definitions what things are matter.
And yes; I keep saying I think it’s only fair if the state give same sex couples the ability to have the institution of marriage.
I keep saying there are other instances of the concept of marriage over and over again. I’m not saying the judeo Christian concept is the only one, or the definition we must and are using in every context.
We, referring to most western societies, and I’ve already said I’m pro ssm because the definition of marriage I believe in can not be given by the state.
It was a joke as i said. Because it obviously has only been legalized in some places, and only recently. Think 30 years together, most people will drive each other nuts!
Humanity is a work in progress. It’s evolution*, man.
I wish you-know-who would come back. Surely he would have something more to say about his gigantic harem than just “that’s a bad example”. 
The Catholic Encyclopaedia notes that such a wedding ceremony “is but the accompaniment and symbol of a purely spiritual grace”, and that “as a wife should share in the life of her husband, and as Christ suffered for the redemption of mankind, the mystical spouse enters into a more intimate participation in His sufferings.”
Saint Catherine of Siena would have been familiar with this story – the Barna da Sienapanel shown was painted in Siena a few years before she was born – and she is recorded as praying as a child that she would have a similar experience, which she eventually did.
A mystical marriage to Christ is also an attribute of Saint Rosa of Lima (died 1617), and many other saints have reported such visions.
As for the original concept, how far back do you want to go?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/marriage#Etymology
Zhongwen.com tells us the origin of 婚 is “woman 女 off into the sunset 昏 (phonetic)”.
I see. Dr. yyy diagnoses severe repression, but of exactly what, it’s hard to say.
(*not an anti-creationist statement)