Gay Marriage

My purpose here is not to state whether or not gay marriage is a good idea. I do, however, think there are some interesting issues regarding the idea that I haven't seen addressed very often. In my experience it seems that people who promote gay marriage tend to treat marriage somewhat less seriously than those who oppose gay marriage. Generally, my more liberal friends are quite supportive of it. However, they are more likely than my conservative friends to have cohabited with a lover outside of marriage. They are also more likely to have given up on a marriage through divorce than my more conservative friends.
This all leads to the question of why marriage exists in the first place. There's a wide range of opinion about this, obviously. A good argument could be made that the best reason for it is to provide stability for children who are created from a relationship. Conservatives probably would view it this way. Some would argue that the chief reason for marriage is to provide someone with a partner. However, I don't know that people are really monogamous by nature, so I don't know that we really need a partner.

If marriage is for the purpose of giving someone a partner, then fine. Gay people should have a right to a "legal" partner too. There should be no discrimination. But if marriage is best justified as a way to encourage fathers to not abandon their children, then the rationale behind gay marriage is less apparent.

Having a mechanism to provide people with partners may be less compelling than having one that encourages involved parenting. Liberals acknowledge this through their behavior. Many see nothing wrong with living together outside of marriage. In other words, they see no great need to "legalize" the relationship and are comfortable "partnering" without government or religious blessing. My guess is that many liberals wouldn't really care if the institution of marriage eventually faded away completely. For that reason, it seems that they are being somewhat hypocritical in their demands regarding gay marriage. They are demanding that people have a right to partake in something they don't really support or believe in in the first place. (I realize there are a lot of liberals who do value marriage. I'm generalizing here).

So, is the institution of marriage still a viable idea in this post-modernist age? Interesting question, I think.