I refused to think of marriage as an ecclesiastical assignment.

Thank you.

I think marriage is unconstitutional.

Allowing a person in a bathrobe waving his hands and mumbling magic words to perform a legally binding civil contract is plain wrong.

Needing the state or the church to give permission to live together, have sex and procreate is wrong.

Giving economic and social preferential treatment to married folks that are unavailable to singles, including the widowed is wrong.

Economically and socially punishing people who no longer want to be married is wrong.

I vote to do away with marriage as a civil contract and rewrite the laws to allow all people the same rights.

If someone wants to play the marriage game ok, no problem, nust let it be a religious event not a civil event.

I'm the opposite. I like the way the French do marriage -- treating it as a civil event/contract, and then letting the religious do as they please afterward. Marriage conveys an array of legal benefits that can normally be duplicated in other ways, if desired.

As for discrimination against singles, yes, I've had that my entire life, although it's not terribly noticeable now. It was noticeable when I was younger, though. We've always had to pay full freight.

A simple defense of viewing Marriage as a contract is that actions have foreseeable consequences, and in a just society, the disproportionate strengths of two bargaining positions ought to be made level.

Plus, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!  And the attorneys' fees!!!

It's really about permission to have sex.

They pile the guilt on you when you're single about the "sin next to murder" if you dare touch someone else.

It's a form of control. After you consummate the marriage, they control you in other ways, and you know what those are.

Indeed. They just can't survive without attempting to control everything.