Well, now we're back to the big question that you have yet to answer. Why NOW? Why, after more than 5500 years, is it so critical that it happen now, right now, in this epoch of human history, in this era of societal development? How is this going to ensure the survival of society? A simple "It's the right thing to do," isn't going to even begin to answer that question. "It's the right thing to do," is an emotional want, not an argument for change, much less for such a profound change.
Why is it that what has worked for society for all of recorded human history is now, suddenly, wrong? In order to answer why "it's the right thing to do," you MUST be able to explain why it was so wrong for more than 5500 years, why it didn't work, and why society was worse because of it. Good luck with that.
That's the emotional argument of using the exception to disprove the rule, because looking at all of recorded history through the lens of a snapshot in time is not only short-sighted, but incorrect. Please don't tell me you are using the current divorce rates as justification for same-sex marriage. The fact is, divorce in any kind of significant numbers is a relative recent phenomenon. Even going back to the liberal Greco-Roman days, the ancient Athenians liberally allowed divorce, but it was still exceedingly rare, due to social and familial pressures and traditions. In religion, divorce is considered an affront to God, and thus is only allowed under certain circumstances. Even after the Reformation, when marriage became mostly a civil contract, divorce was considered to be against the public interest. Why is divorce against the public interest? Because society works best with marriage. In the US we currently have large numbers of divorce, and, you know, we're just doing a bang up job societally. "Till death do us part" serves society. Divorce does not.
Ironically, as soon as people started marrying for luv is when divorces started happening with disturbing frequency. The takeaway from that is as soon as people start doing selfishly for themselves rather than what is best for society, everybody loses. There's a liberal viewpoint you can wrap your head around. So, again, why, exactly, is allowing same-sex marriage the right thing to do?
