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Originally Posted by Thor
Well this Marriage apocalypse in Iceland has been going on for well over 2-3 decades.
Its quite common for couples to live together for 5-10 years before even getting married, that is IF they do. Just a few weeks ago my sister in law's brother got married after being with his girlfriend for 26 years, they have 3 kids and as far as families go, great family!
Yet Iceland remains one of the top "family" nations on the planet, where so much is about the kids and family time. We have loads of holidays, kids are brought to adults parties as a norm, we have long paid maternity leave for women and the men have time off as well.
I just think that in our particular case, which is pretty common in the Nordic nations is that people don't see Marriage as something that is necessary, often seen as reflective of old values and old beliefs as people are leaving the church in droves and care less and less about what many still see as a patriarchal ceremony celebrating outdated values and beliefs.
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And this is really the point. We're at a point where a marital contract is no longer necessary for any reason other than economic purposes, and if you're religious, to fulfill some deity's rules.
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Originally Posted by peter12
I think you are suffering a bit from the ideological stance that most people take on this issue. If we are speaking functionally, I am sure gay people can raise children (whatever that means). Certainly, from a socio-biological perspective, homosexuals have probably always had an active role in the social aspect of child-rearing. More specifically, I think there is a huge problem with increasingly bio-technological means of creating families. That is a connected issue.
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The biggest issue with "bio-technological means of creating families" is that there are thousands of kids in the foster care system who desperately want loving, caring families and can't get them. But instead we get the Duggars and their ilk with their "traditional families" that are overpopulating the US with low-IQ, poorly educated types who try to force their outdated religious beliefs on others.
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Obviously, for most generally good-natured, and compassionate liberals, the gay marriage issue is about protection from discrimination. I would disagree. As I have stated many times in various forms, but I will restate again more explicitly, the gay marriage debate is only tangentially related to SSM, but is a general symptom of an overall shift in what a family is called, and what is its purpose. I don't agree with that shift. My tolerance of homosexuality has very, very little to do with that perspective.
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Marriage and family are social constructs that are constantly evolving and are different in every single culture and at every single time in history.
Biblical marriage is a farce--it started with Adam and Eve, whose children then married and had babies with each other, in an incestuous set of circumstances that nowadays would be horrifying. And then the cycle started over again with Noah and his family, given that only 8 people survived the flood--well, how about some more incest to go around? And then you had Ancient Israel, where a man could have more than one wife, and also he was allowed concubines. And then they started divorcing their wives and taking younger wives. Then in the New Testament it became more of a one-man/one-woman system, but with the strict rule that the woman was inferior to and subjected to the man.
So even "religious" marriage changed several times through the course of the Bible.
Then in actual history--there have been arranged marriages, marriages for dowries, child marriage, women who married solely because that was their only option in life. Children were raised by parents/grandparents/older siblings/the whole community.
What exactly is your "Family" definition? Father and a mother and 2.5 kids?
That's a very modern, very Western take on "family" and it didn't really become the norm until the 17th century or so, through Europe and then the Americas. And even that family--50 years ago marriage was practically a necessity for women, or it was almost impossible to get by on their own. Women stayed with abusive men, men who cheated on them, men who were alcoholics because that was the only way to get her children raised. Is that a better option than the current state of things where women can get away from awful men who mistreat them?
Really, for centuries and millenia, many cultures raised children as a community--parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends and neighbors all took care of each other. Likely that's a better system of rearing children than the 2 parent family tradition, especially as it is now, where having one parent at home is unsustainable.
Also, with regards to ensuring the next generation: is population of the planet declining? Not even close. If anything, shrinking the number of children people are having is a good thing. We're already stretching the limits of Earth's resources, and excessive population isn't going to make that better.