Phatscotty wrote:A fine response. Let's just look at one thing you mentioned a little closer. Legal contract - what is the history and form of the contract in the U.S.A.? When did Federal government begin to license marriages and why? Why was it a state issue for 200 years?
I dunno, laziness? Not enough telegraphs? The realized the value of extra babies to conscript? I'm not exactly good with an ouiji board, but if you had a point to make for 1800's politicians, go ahead.

warmonger1981 wrote:@ /
Do you have a problem with a 60 year old caucasian male who now identifies himself as a 15 year old black girl wanting to marry and have sexual relations with a 13 year old? Does age play a factor in ones mental capabilities or maturity? Remember your only as old as you feel. Does a 60 year old caucasian have the same access to Affirmative Action laws as a 20 year old African-American? Marriage was mostly for strategic purposes in the beginning but most people identify marriage with love nowadays. The Bible says only a man may lay with a woman although there are now gay preachers within the church.
I honestly hope you are going for some kind of satire with so many straw-men, cliches, slippery slopes, and moral high grounds in one paragraph, but I'll play along anyhow.
I don't believe in using race or gender as a legal identity. Genetics are useful as far as drawing generalizations and probabilities, to know the risks that lie ahead, and to plan ahead to avoid genetic disorders. To make it your identity is to hold yourself back, to make it another's identity is to hold society back. Of course a 60 year old Caucasian American should have the same opportunities as a 20 year old African American. All opportunities should be accessible to anyone, with complete blindness to any irrelevant data. Everyone seems to be trapped in some sort of pathetic self-victimizing pity party these days, let the people have all the same resources, them make them hungry for competition, make people make
themselves elite.
That's the right people have; for whatever cards they are dealt to be played on any table anyone else has access to, whether they are a man, woman, gay, straight, asexual, bi, first generation, disabled, or anything else on or off the scales, and as long as there are benefits to marriage, that's on the table too.
Age of consent laws are another matter, since they exist on a scientifically proven neurological competency measure irrelevant to this discussion.
Now if you want to talk biblical laws... The bible also bans
divorce, adultery, not having a hymen before marriage, being raped, mixing dairy with meat, shellfish, pork, working on the Sabbath, eating any meat not killed in a kosher ritual, being uncircumcised, ignoring a priest's judgement, rebelling against your parents, planting two kinds of seed in one field, wearing two types of material at the same time, trimming your sideburns, and like a zillion other things. You can't pick and choose, either hold everyone to literally impossibly high standards and stone probably like pretty much everyone on earth to death like some kind of ISIS militant, or let modern people make laws that are currently relevant for pragmatic reasons.