>>I would argue, personally, that marriage is more of a romantic than a sexual situation; considering people that one might label as sexual and aromantic - like guys that we might traditionally label 'players' or 'eternal bachelors', who wouldn't consider marriage unless their preferences undergo some change, or they're pressured into it by society.<<
At its core, marriage is a social union that codifies a personal partnership in specific ways so that the society understands how to handle matters of inheritances, taxation, and child custody. Different cultures have made hundreds of variations on that theme. So marriage can involve a man and a woman, a man and several women, a woman and several men, a bunch of mixed-sex adults, whatever; temporarily or permanently. It can be primarily an arrangement of business, romance, and/or sex. The important thing is that the people enter it knowingly, willingly, and with compatible expectations. I believe that would be easier if we had open and honest variations formally acknowledging all the things that people try to kludge the current monofocal option to cover. But mainstream society has a screaming blue fit whenever anyone attempts to interface logic with marriage, so I don't see that happening any time soon.
Consequently, I encourage individual businesses and communities to detour around the obstacles and simply "behave as if" all families are real families. So if you run a hospital and someone puts down their roommate as emergency contact with appropriate legal paperwork, that means you smile and say, "Okay," and don't pester them; if you run a store and your employee wants to take a personal day because their nonsexual significant other is sick, that means you approve it and call in someone else instead of arguing over it. If you're a real estate agent and 5 people want to buy a house together, that means you look for ways to make it happen, not nag them about their marital arrangements or lack thereof. (There are actually lists of companies that are good places to work or do business because of how they treat queer employees/customers.) If you promote "family values," that means valuing the families that exist, not just the ones you think people should have.
>>In this case, I think, the ecology that would be strengthened with more acceptable diversity would be our economy; the homogeneity in our society now allows some industries to grow to monoliths, and locks others (like real estate) into very rigid patterns that make it difficult to recover from what should be a small recession.<<
Sooth.
>>I think I was trying to get at this: the marriage issue is a really complex one that I don't really feel capable of tackling myself. But you have a lot of good thoughts on it.<<
Ah, I've got an unfair advantage then. I've been a gender studies scholar for ... gosh, it's been over 20 years now. And I've been aware of marriage variations for pretty much my whole life.
Re: Thoughts
At its core, marriage is a social union that codifies a personal partnership in specific ways so that the society understands how to handle matters of inheritances, taxation, and child custody. Different cultures have made hundreds of variations on that theme. So marriage can involve a man and a woman, a man and several women, a woman and several men, a bunch of mixed-sex adults, whatever; temporarily or permanently. It can be primarily an arrangement of business, romance, and/or sex. The important thing is that the people enter it knowingly, willingly, and with compatible expectations. I believe that would be easier if we had open and honest variations formally acknowledging all the things that people try to kludge the current monofocal option to cover. But mainstream society has a screaming blue fit whenever anyone attempts to interface logic with marriage, so I don't see that happening any time soon.
Consequently, I encourage individual businesses and communities to detour around the obstacles and simply "behave as if" all families are real families. So if you run a hospital and someone puts down their roommate as emergency contact with appropriate legal paperwork, that means you smile and say, "Okay," and don't pester them; if you run a store and your employee wants to take a personal day because their nonsexual significant other is sick, that means you approve it and call in someone else instead of arguing over it. If you're a real estate agent and 5 people want to buy a house together, that means you look for ways to make it happen, not nag them about their marital arrangements or lack thereof. (There are actually lists of companies that are good places to work or do business because of how they treat queer employees/customers.) If you promote "family values," that means valuing the families that exist, not just the ones you think people should have.
>>In this case, I think, the ecology that would be strengthened with more acceptable diversity would be our economy; the homogeneity in our society now allows some industries to grow to monoliths, and locks others (like real estate) into very rigid patterns that make it difficult to recover from what should be a small recession.<<
Sooth.
>>I think I was trying to get at this: the marriage issue is a really complex one that I don't really feel capable of tackling myself. But you have a lot of good thoughts on it.<<
Ah, I've got an unfair advantage then. I've been a gender studies scholar for ... gosh, it's been over 20 years now. And I've been aware of marriage variations for pretty much my whole life.