I think we at last may have found some common ground. I know somewhere in the endless threads about this I've said that my commitment to my wife had nothing to do with our getting married; but a strong desire not to have my children listed as bastards or illegitimate. Knowing that they would be so classified were I not married when they were born, I proposed some 35 years ago only because I had found the woman with whom I wanted to have children.
I repeat myself again, but the stigma attached to out-of-wedlock births has largely disappeared in the last 30 years or so. Hence, marriage has about outlived its usefulness, notwithstanding today's ruling. I think the solution that makes the most sense now is that we just stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone. What a marriage is today is little more than a meaningless (to the State - who, after all, is being asked to issue these licenses) intensive issued by two people.
I repeat myself again, but the stigma attached to out-of-wedlock births has largely disappeared in the last 30 years or so. Hence, marriage has about outlived its usefulness, notwithstanding today's ruling. I think the solution that makes the most sense now is that we just stop issuing marriage licenses to anyone. What a marriage is today is little more than a meaningless (to the State - who, after all, is being asked to issue these licenses) intensive issued by two people.