The Marriage "Ideal"

Ross Douthat (whose name, particularly when he writes articles as asinine as this one, i have a hard time not noticing as a declension of "douche" and "ass-hat"):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/09douthat.html?_r=1&hp

firstly, GG lawyers his ass:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/09/marriage/index.html

and there's no need to really say much more, as GG wins yet again.

here's DOUbachebagassTHAT's main "argument", i guess:

"This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos."

i have no idea how the first sentence is relevant to straight vs gay marriage, unless he think that merely by being the same sex, gay people are therefore "sexually identical". i suppose he does.

ah but that next sentence, thats the interesting one. obviously Douthat thinks that infertile people should not be allowed to married and should be relegated to whatever inferior institution it is he wants to stick gay couples into. infertile people, people who only want to adopt, people who dont want to have kids at all.....

thats fine. for Douthat, the point of marriage is to have and raise kids. thats typically what religions say about the whole thing, and thus we see that Douthat's argument is in no way "intellectual" and is merely religious.

marriage means different things for different people. Douthat can go fuck himself; he cant define what marriage means for me.

he's right about one thing though: "These arguments have lost because they’re wrong." indeed, ross. so will your argument lose, because it too is wrong.