“Up until the most recent decades, marriage had traditionally always been between people of the same race.”
You have several thousand years of Western and Asian history to go through if you think that. The Mongols married the Chinese who, in turn intermarried within the “Chinese” ethnicities (there were over 50 of them) and the Koreans and the Southern Asian (non-Chinese) races. I, myself, am a product of 2,000 years of racial interbreeding out of the West. Middle Eastern, Greek, Germanic, Saxon, Anglish, Briton, Gaul, Gaelic, Celt, Pict, Moor, Cherokee…
I suspect you, too, are a mix of races.
Except for blocking marriages with either “uncivilized” races or races with which one’s people were at war, interbreeding is as ancient as humanity. Hell, the current theory is that the Neanderthals were bred out of existence by mixing with HomoSapiens.
There is no significant history of racially “pure” marriage in this world.

“It has already been redefined countless times by society and governments. I can?t see how ?redefining equates to destroying? is any sort of valid argument.”
The “redefining” has only been a question of polygyny, not of the gender of the core partners. “How many wives can a man have?”
vs “Can a man have a husband?”
Already, this argument has devolved in countries that accept homosexual “marriage” into “Can I marry my sister?” and “Can I marry my dog?”
We don’t have to look far to see where gay “marriage” goes. Canada is having these arguments now.

“So shouldn?t we focus some efforts on preventing singles from raising children or African Americans from having children out of wedlock? I don?t see how preventing couples who cannot biologically have children is going to do anything to help curb the problems with children we face today.”
And how do you plan to do any of that? Take their children away? Sterilize them?

What we need to be doing is preventing any further attacks on marriage by the government, the homosexuals and the anti-religious (not entirely a redundant list, but not mutually exclusive, either). We also need to remove some of the attacks already levied against it (like more welfare for single parents and “no fault” divorce).

If polygamy is morally wrong or wrong for society, then so is same-sex marriage. If underage marriage is wrong… NAMBLA?

That’s why same-sex marriage is a danger to traditional marriage.

Huh?

If it is a fight over a millennium (or more) of civilized culture’s methodology of guaranteeing “our posterity” — then take it ‘head-on’.

Don’t be a wuss and nibble around the edges, slobbering that tiresome “living Constitution” crappola for us here.

Fight us face-to-face. Which ‘societal anchoring belief’ do you think will win?

Cite examples, so we can “see for ourselves” —- but I doubt any can.

Solid, cogent examples please ….We’ll be waiting ….

By the way, if you believe 3% of our society has the divine right to change the known history of civilized humanity, ….. dream on.

The ‘civil’ part of civilization comes from force. That force can either exist as an inherent element within the culture itself, or it can be imposed from above by the government. But, one way or t he other, it has to exist for civilization to survive at all. As with all complex systems, it is in the inherent nature of human societies to become less stable over time. And, yes, that is a ‘natural’ process. But it is most certainly one that leftists (and Libertarians for that matter) use and intentionally exacerbate in working towards more state control.

As to ‘freeing women from men’, it simply is not possible to free people from one another and still have a civil society. Women will never be free of men and men will never be free of women in any society other than one with a government with an unlimited writ to enforce such a notion. The important thing is to enforce the notion at a non-political social level that both men and women are morally obligated to respect and defend the binding relaitionships they voluntarily enter into. One way or the other, I can assure you human civilization will return to that simple notion or it will cease to exist altogether.

Where do the changes lead us? I do not know but we can always adjust course on the way. You want to keep things the way they were? Well, the way they were “when”? Everybody might differ as to the “when” took place. Amish picked their time.

I think there is a word for that kind of government – dictatorship. All of which is perfectly ok because, gee, they’ve dressed it all up in contitution.

So why is the divorce rate so high? Can you separate the increase in divorce rates from the general social chaos that has also been a part of the last 70 years of liberalization of our society? Are you absolutlely certain that there is no connection at all between the government’s overt decoupling the public institution in our society from the religious institutions that once provided the moral authority people were expected to observe and the increase in the divorce rate over that same period of time?

And, further, if you want to use the divorce rate to justify forcing our society to accept homosexuality as the moral equivalent of a loving heterosexual marriage, what further chagnes will you justify once that goal has been achieved? Is there a bottom somewhere that you think we are going to safely land upon?

Traditional civil marriage is the template that government can and should use to encourage men and men to take care of the babies they helped create.

Now, some believe that marriage isn’t really about children at all, only about adult romantic love. They are only half-right. It is about romantic love, but it is primarily about the proper template, voluntary template, for the raising of children.

Others believe that marriage is about raising children, but that two men can raise children as effectively as a one man and one woman union can.

My argument for traditional civil marriage is that it is about children and not just about romantic adult love and that the one man and one woman union is the ideal head of household.

Now you say, “Do you want to ban single parenthood?” No. But I think society and government should encourage the two parent family, with one man and one woman at its head.

But society and government should be concerned about heterosexual sexual activity because such activity has been known to create babies and babies need adults to raise them.

Since it is one man and one woman having sex together that created the baby, it makes perfect sense that marriage would be defined as a union of a man and a woman.

It’s a bit like getting into a car crash and then worrying that the rain will dirty up your car…

In any case, you state that the ideal arrangement is one man and one woman union because that is the best way to raise children. So… since this is the best way to raise children, you want gay marriage to be forbidden (even if they had no intention to adopt children)? What about making single parent illegal? After all, this does not fit your definition of an “ideal arrangement”.

It seems to me that you oppose the concept simply because, well, you are not used to it. I have yet to hear a convincing argument against same sex marriage. (The courts have not heard any either it seems)

And in every state where there has been a referendum, 33 I believe, all have supported traditional marriage.

I?m part of a two-sex marriage. Knowing that gay people are getting married will not threaten my relationship with my wife.

It is true that a gay people getting married will not make you think your wife if ugly and rude if you currently think of her as beautiful and courteous.

But traditional marriage is only partially about a man, a woman and how they feel about each other. It’s also about the children a man and a woman might create.

To be blunt, if a man and a woman have sexual intercourse, a baby might (not always, but might) result nine months down the road. If two men have sex with each other, we can safely say that there will be no baby as a result of their sexual intercourse. Similarly, if two women have sexual intercourse, no baby will be born as a direct result of their sexual intercourse.

Now, it is possible, given the crooked timber of humanity and the especially crooken timber of the male gender, that less than 9 months after a man has sexual intercourse with a woman, the man might have forgotten how much he enjoyed the sex.

Yet a baby might still be born anyway, long after the sex is over.

Now, a baby, unlike the man and the woman, can not take care of himself or herself. An infant needs to be raised somehow, with the help of others.

When the government defines civil (not religious) marriage in the traditional way, between one man and one woman, government is presenting the father and mother as the ideal head of household.

Men and women are different and they fill complementary roles when they are the head of a two-parent family. Two men simply can not provide the same guidance that one man and one woman can. Neither can two women. And this does not mean that the two men or the two woman are incompetent or otherwise bad people. It just means that being raised by one man, the father, and one woman, the mother, is the best way for children to be raised.

The government encourages this “arrangement” by establishing civil marriage as the “traditional” one man and one woman union.

Make sense?

Conversely, there’s no traction on proposed bills that would allow federal recognition of civil unions.