"Marriage and family existed long before any legislature decided to regulate them. For centuries they have been central to society, contributing to its social cohesion and fundamental structure... Marriage and family promote the psychological, social and eonomic well being of all members of the family unit." Jimmy C

Would you agree, Jimmy C, that the basis of what you are referring to
is love and commitment? A love and respect from one adult to the other and to children and the commitment to the nurturing of their relationships? Put that way, I agree that the family unit has been paramount in civilization.

I think I know what you mean by "natural". Do you mean that if it were natural, i.e. 'nature's way', there would be the capability of offspring? (Leaving aside the many heterosexual couples who have not been able to have offspring.) That may be. The fact remains that there is such a phenomenom as same-sex attraction and cohesion. What are we to make of that?

When someone suggests that "all she needs is a good man" or vice versa, they don't know what they're saying. It is like saying that if a heterosexual person spent enough time with another heterosexual person of the same sex and learned to love and depend upon the other person it would inevitably become a sexual relationship. It's just not so. For whatever reason, there are people among us all who react romantically to their own gender just as there are other people out there to whom the notion doesn't even occur, much less have a primeval force behind it.

We're complicated beings; so far as I know, nobody really knows why we differ in our attractants. But there are differences and they are valid ones. And natural, in the sense that we use the word.

I have both gay and lesbian friends. Maybe I'm just lucky in my friendships- they are good people.