[vhawk01]

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From Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed.:

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marriage: The legal union of a couple as husband and wife. The essentials of a valid marriage are 1) parties legally capable of contracting to marry, 2) mutual consent or agreement, and 3) an actual contracting in the form required by law. Marriage has important consequences in many areas of the law, such as torts, criminal law, evidence, debtor-creditor relations, property, and contracts.

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I must be missing the part about propagation of the species.

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Yes, and so do the gays. They are able to make private contracts amongst themselves anyways. Why marriage?

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I think mostly this is wrong. I think that MOST gay couples want marriage for the practical reasons. You say they can 'already make contracts' but I am not sure that is accurate. There are numerous cases of families taking over the right to make medical decisions, despite clearly laid out agreements between the parties, simply because they aren't married. We as society put special emphasis on the marriage, and gays cannot currently enjoy the benefits of that emphasis.

However, I am sure there are also gay couples who want gay marriage for more symbolic and emotional reasons. Perhaps they simply want to be able to avail themselves of the things that other people enjoy. I mean, what if we had 'marriage' and then, exactly the same legally but only used for specific people, we had 'fat marriage.' Its exactly the same, we just wont call it marriage, because its kind of gross. I don't see what these silly fat people are getting so worked up about, I mean, jeez, they get the same benefits!