The uproar about the recent ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowing gay marriage is ridiculous. People talk about gay marriage being unnatural, as if heterosexual marriage is something natural. Marriage is an institution of human making and is not really natural. Most of the living beings on this world survive and flourish without benefit of marriage.

Marriage is a legal thing, made by humans for humans. It is a contract. Marriage's role is to define what a family is politically and economically and what responsibilities a person has to the family and through the family to society as a whole. It's a way for government to control people and for rich people to hoard their power and wealth.

In America today, marriage is one of the main ways that government determines whether someone is allowed to benefit. So the real issue isn't about something being unnatural. The real issue with whether the government will give gay people the same benefits as the straights.

What's missing in all this is that marriage has almost nothing to do with real human interaction. Marriage doesn't provide love and trust and caring. Those are the things that are really important, and they can't be legislated. Marriages provides the rules about who has power in a family. Marriage doesn't provide rules about how to be.