I am trying to understand your position. (Please freely do a full reset of my view if I am just not getting it, there is no pride attached, this is purely trying to exchange ideas.)The state govts can recognize legal competence to sign into binding contracts based on "age of consent" (which citizens vote on to establish as policy).
As for "marriage": it makes more sense to me to have state laws recognize "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships" to specify legal terms and conditions of financial or custodial/estate agreements between consenting parties. And leave "marriage" involving personal or spiritual social relationships or rituals up to people or churches to conduct under their own terms and beliefs, similar to baptisms or communions that are part of religious expression or practice.
All the conflicts over LGBT and marriage can be avoided by keeping govt out of beliefs and beliefs out of govt.
ummmmmm you are looking for intelligent political discussion. I am looking for whatever it takes to explain the concept of "not abusing govt to establish biased beliefs that discriminate against people of other creeds."
If you get this concept, great, maybe we both celebrate finding one more person objective enough to discuss how this affects everything else in politics otherwise causing the mob mentality neither of us can stand, apparently!
Welcome aboard, keep posting.
And be the intelligent change you want to see in the world!
I will keep following your posts.
With two of us, that's enough to have a conversation, and maybe a clue as to what it will take to overcome collective politics that feeds bullying and trolling online. My theory is to establish one on one connections with each person, and this eventually dismantles the machine by reducing it to working parts. The same bricks used to build walls and barriers can be taken apart and used to build bridges and roads.
People are the govt which merely reflect what we enforce. So when we the people build better relations and solutions, we can better lobby the party agenda and legislate through govt to implement better ideas and approaches than what is promoted in the media for political hype and Pavlovian pandering.
Your statement about competence to enter into contracts is clear to me, no questions.
Whether the other is called "marriage," "civil unions," or "domestic partnerships," or anything else, it seems to me it will clearly be both (1) subjective, and (2) a category of relationship a majority of the populace demands receives favorable treatment, in whatever form (tax benefits or otherwise). We can move that debate around anywhere and land it in different places -- e.g., which relationships are sanctioned by a church, which organizations count as a church, whether churches should be out of the loop and the criteria should be applied by some other body -- but the end result is always to ask which relationships get the special, favorable treatment ordinary voters demand for (currently) marriage. No?