Great post! The usual comeback I get, mainly from women, when I question this debate is, "Why not?" In Europe, one must ask that, as same-sex marriages or unions are in place in most of what Rumsfeld called Old Europe. The only noise one hears is out of the US or places like Poland.

Marriage law is hardly the piece of the picture that keeps the spark in most couples' beds. This whole debate has been about inclusion and affirmation. The affirmation is less about love and more about good-sex discoveries that people want others around them to know about. It must've been like this when meat-and-potatoe eaters were first confronted with Marco Polo's Italian lot's return with their newfound fervour for ginger and rice. No doubt the line of resistance was first the women over the pots, then the butchers, etc., and then the good Catholic Church that imposed fish-on-Friday rules to at least save the fishmongers.

Marriage law is about the transfer of property and responsibility for the upbringing and welfare of children and those who bear them. Most western marriage laws originate in Judaic traditions, and I would agree that these are a bit dated these days. The Catholic Church then built an institution around mother and wife (The Marian culture). Today's paranoiacs huddle around glossy-backed Bibles and boom boxes cursing those they believe are threatening the whole system. This threat is evidenced OUTSIDE the US office-tower environment by billions of women who fear they may be left to fend for themselves and their offspring.

There are many valid issues, concerns and dreams. Most of us are confounded today with the idea that sexual fulfillment (if one presumes the much-ballyhooed abstinence line that is, thankfully, strictly a Continental US fantasy!) is to be realised strictly between one man and one woman. Think. If the doctors and the FDA do their job, and preachers are convincing, then that means 80 years or more sleeping and taking pleasure with only one person. Fortunately, such a concept was not hammered into my childhood.

It is time for a broader cultural rethink. Otherwise, let's take a fresh look at fundamentalist Islam and put our women folk back in the kitchens and beds. Japan is having this debate, as marriage western-style was imposed upon them only 150 years ago. A French weekly this week calls for a broad reform of the social culture, including marriage, coupling and child raising.

As for gay marriage, it is time to challenge those (principally women from numbers I've seen) who they are entitled to bring children into this world on their own, depriving the child and the other biological partner of their natural right, responsibility and lifelong joy. Population growth is an enormous problem; societies must think this challenge through more thoughtfully and less selfishly.

Bear in mind the US' unique perspective on this matter: Manifest Destiny required birthing a lot of babies. Religious conservatives from pre-Dickens' Middle England together with pragmatists forged an exceptionally narrow family model on America. To make it work, churches heartily became sex police. Europe had a similar experience following the Dark Ages, which led to the world early immigrants were eager to flea. Do we ever learn?

While marriage has historically been a male-female thing, there is abundant evidence that many non-Judeo-Christian cultural histories and real human experience have been much more open wihen it comes to sexual fulfillment, including male same-sex activity, if not formalised relationships beyond the universally exalted context of friendship.

I'm just reading Prof. Joseph Massad's highly acclaimed new book entitled, Desiring Arabs. While I dislike the title, the book is enlightening. Many books exist on sexual practices in Edo Japan and Imperial China. I fear your comment on Romans suggests some fresh reading on the Classical world. Great literature and truth. Beware what the Church has done to certain manuscripts, however.