Marriage

Today we talked about same sex marriage and if it is actually progressive for society to allow this to happen, or if it is just hetero-normative and trying to conform homosexuality into something that fits the heterosexual mold. I thought that this was a very interesting point and had never really thought about same sex marriage as not progressive and not helping same sex couples. I grew up always thinking that marriage was just another part of life, you go to college, get a job, get married and have kids. That was the natural progression in my mind and never really questioned marriage or thought about how it affected people's lives economically. But the more I think about it, the more sense it makes to say that this concept of marriage does exclude people from a certain group and gives benefits to people just because they are married. They didn't do anything specific to earn this, they just decided to live a monogamous life, and the government gives them economic advantages for this reason. That seems really messed up, to give people an advantage for something that is such a personal choice and the state shouldn't have a part in. My question for everyone else is how do you picture life if the institution of marriage was abolished and there wasn't a group that got advantages for choosing a married life-style? And also what do you think would be the best way for society to go about this change, in the incremental way or a total revolution? I know we talked about this in class but I thought that it'd be interesting to see what people would say if they could expand on this idea.