Parenting in committed gay unions are connected to issues of adoption, surrogacy, or gamete donation.
While those things may occasionally be issues connected with some married couples, marriage itself is implicitly connected with the conception and raising of children. Contraception in marriage is a totally different topic all together.
I'm probably going to regret getting back into this shit-- but no.
Do you actually think that people using contraception/birth control/not having babies altogether is in any way the state's business? Seriously, it boggles the mind. Should we also start putting cameras in everyone's houses so we can make sure they're doing it in the missionary position, eyes closed, noticeably uncomfortable and thinking about Jesus? 'Sorry, you haven't had babies yet so we're going to have to cancel your marriage and there's nothing you can do.'
And exactly what kind of long-term effects do you think adoption, surrogacy or gamete donation have on the upbringing of a child? How often do you think that people actually think about how they were conceived, or how they came to be in the care of the people who raised them, compared to all of those years that their parents spent trying to make them into decent human beings? Have you actually met any children who were raised by gay parents? Or who were adopted? There are people on this forum who actually got squeamish in the 'post the song you were conceived to' thread… it's not something people actively think about. It's not something that
parents actively think about, past the paperwork.
I'm still puzzled with why you brought up the whole 'some married people are only interested in themselves' thing because it definitely doesn't apply to people universally… but in your case, it's as if you think so little of other people (and especially gay people) that you're not willing to trust that most people could ever do a good job with this, and they all need your help.
Yes, some gay people will probably not do a good job of raising their children… mostly because they're also human beings and they're not perfect, much like the straight people who don't do a good job of raising their children, of which you've already provided an example. Raising children is hard work and for the most part nobody knows how to do it right… but one constant is that everyone seems to have some pretty big ideas about how it should all go down, including you. But you don't actually know what it's like, and you can't say for certain that someone else's way of raising their kids is inferior to yours… and that goes double for all of the gay people that you don't even know, however assured you are in your judgments of them.
And again, none of these things actively
depend upon marriage… and barring some sort of fascist dictatorship/Orwellian nightmare state, they never will. If you want to make it illegal to ignore your kids, then good luck with that-- but if you really want to protect the children, then why go after gay marriage instead of focusing on child welfare laws? I mean, besides the fact that you prefer to cling to some romanticized vision of the ancient past, as if it's still applicable…
No matter how selfish you seem to think everyone is for wanting a society that reflects their own interests, there's absolutely no point in having some narrow, obsolete, intentionally exclusive definition of it that limits freedoms for everyone involved just because that's what you personally think the world should be like. No one is intentionally trying to hurt anyone, they're just doing what they think is the right thing for everyone including themselves… and it's not up to you or anyone else to pronounce them unworthy or wrong… unless you can say for sure that you know exactly how to raise a perfect ubermensch child or whatever it is that you expect everyone else to be.
To be honest, I don't even think that the majority should be allowed to control the legal/social definition of a word-- I would actually even go further and say that individuals should have the right to define their own relationships in whatever terms they see fit to define them, including marriage. Because relationships are really nobody else's business, and the state should serve the needs of individuals, not itself/painfully outdated and oppressive ideals/whatever constitutes the majority. You wouldn't argue in favor of tax breaks for gay people who can't get married, would you? I mean, if they work and they're pouring money into the system, yet not eligible for all of the breaks that married couples receive, it doesn't seem fair that they wouldn't be excluded from funding these things… and especially from funding those political bodies that willfully oppress them.
As easy as it is to romanticize an era that you can never experience, marriage no longer means what you seem to want it to mean, and there is absolutely no good reason why we can't be more inclusive as a society. You can't just ignore centuries of positive, progressive change in favor of an obsolete definition and then expect it to hold true, and pretend that someone's degree of commitment to the raising of children isn't a completely separate issue from the degree of their commitment to another person.
TL, DR:
Obsolete definitions of words are irrelevant, clinging to them is counterproductive.
Marriage is not the same as child-rearing, and can and should be considered separately.
Nobody knows the best way to raise a child anyways.
People should be able to define their relationships however they want according to their own beliefs, and any state that would refuse to acknowledge that freedom is oppressive.
