I see that the idea of survival has reared its head, as if we survive in couples with offspring, all by ourselves. This very morning I was hearing it explained that humanity developed (though this will not convince the anti-Steve arguers) when the climate pressure of a developing glacial made it imperative for groups to come together and cooperate. We survive as groups.

And even the survivalist types with their bunkers and long term storage depend on others to produce the materials for those bunkers and stores. Most modern people would have no chance of survival, even with those stores and guns once the raw materials run out.

Who knows where to find useful and accessible minerals that have not been worked out? Who can deliver a baby trapped in the birth canal? Who knows where to find safe natural medicines? If society collapsed, you'd have a better chance with the Yanomami than in Oregon.

The point of this tangent being, that because we survive as groups, with division of labour, having couples not open to procreation does not make a group less likely to survive. Having non-fertile uncles and aunties may even improve the chances. It works with naked mole rats, meerkats, wolves, and other social beasties. They tend to go in for group hugging more than we allow, so the necessity for some sort of physical contact which same sex marriage enables doesn't arise.

I cannot understand why so many people of the hetero persuasion somehow think that their own marriages are diminished if other people call their bonding by the same name. It's as if it were a quantum phenomenon, with an electron here influencing the spin of another over there. Without the maths behind it.

By the way, if anyone were to keep the word wedlock, it should be the traditionalists. They're the ones with the locked up concepts.

Penny