The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #147102   Message #3454771
Posted By: Amos
20-Dec-12 - 11:25 AM
Thread Name: BS: 'Gay marriage' question
Subject: RE: BS: 'Gay marriage' question
Consummation is a non-issue here, I believe. It is an issue, of course, to the individuals if they enter marriage without having sex, expecting to have it, and find they cannot. But the reasonable thing is to dissolve the marriage by common consent. It becomes an issue when marriage is devised as some other kind of mechanism, such as social control of reproduction, but this is really a legacy of the medieval Church and should be washed out of our social policies.

Marriage is no thing other than a postulated relationship, generated by two individuals sharing an agreement. If they are wise, the agreement continues to be generated despite the vicissitudes of life and living, and the marriage survives. This is a Good Thing especially if we are talking about child-rearing marriages, because growing up is confusing enough in our madcap world. But if the agreement dries up and cannot be regenerated mutually, it doesn't make a lot of sense to encumber the dissolution with arbitrary categories and weird definitions.