Perhaps the most important thing about marriage is the way in which it creates new kinship ties. Marriage is in fact the primary means through which a person acquires new relatives and close social relations - people for whom you are expected to sacrifice and who are expected to sacrifice for you. This is also one reason why religious conservatives are wrong when they decry gay marriages as not being "real" marriages.

In What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay Marriage, Robert A. Krieg writes:

The ceremony tells us that marriage is a holy estate "into which these two persons present come now to be joined." From this time forward, they will be united in life's closest relationship. When they are asked. "Who is your nearest relative," they will no longer give the name of mother, father, sister, or brother, but the name of this person, their spouse. They are now kin.

They have made a commitment to love, support, comfort, encourage, and respect each other, helping each other to learn and grow and be all that they can be-separately and together. They will be there for each other in happy times, in hard times, and in the in-between ordinary everyday moments. They will have a partner in making decisions and sharing in the many pressures and responsibilities of modern life as well as in simply enjoying each other's companionship. In short, they are no longer alone. Ideally, this is what it means to be joined together by God in marriage.

Is there anything in this description which is necessarily exclusive to heterosexual couples? Is there anything in this description which can logically or biologically only apply when a couple consists of one man and one woman? No. Everything in this description of the marriage relationship can apply equally well to two men or two women as it can to one man and one woman. There is nothing here which cannot potentially describe the relationship of a gay couple and nothing which may gays in close relationships would not do for their partners.

If all of this can apply to gay couples, is there any reason why it should be legally denied to gay couples? Is there any reason why society would be harmed if a gay man would answer that his partner is now his closely relative? Would other marriages be harmed if a gay man makes a commitment to "love, support, comfort, encourage, and respect" his partner? Would the institution of marriage be damaged somehow if a gay woman has a "partner in making decisions and sharing in the many pressures and responsibilities of modern life" who is another woman rather than a man?

Once again, the answer to all of these questions has to be an unqualified "no." On the contrary, we have to conclude that exactly the opposite is the case. People are usually better off with partners. Having someone who will help you when you are sick or disabled takes that burden off the community and the government. Having someone with whom you can pool finances, resources, and energy will generally put you in a position that's much better than if you had been alone.

Marriage establishes kinship relationship unlike those that can be established in any other manner — the relationships are unlike those created biologically by birth or legally by things like adoption. Those kinship relationships should be made available not simply to heterosexual couples, but also to homosexual couples because gays not only capable of participating in them, but also because the rest of society is better off when they are afforded that opportunity.

 

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