I couldn’t agree with you more! Culture/religion/habit is not only pervasive; it shapes how we perceive the world around us and think about the relationships found in it.

In the minds of many people the two relationships are the same; marriage is the bonding between male and female humans. One should keep in mind that the Stonewall riots occurred in our lifetimes, only 43 years or so ago, as doing so lends perspective to how far the West has travelled in that interval. The change in societal perceptions of homosexuality has been enormous, sufficiently large that the required redefinition of the noun marriage will occur soon – no mean feat to change the language that fast.

One of the enduring characteristics of democracy (a virtue IMHO), more so for representative, rather less for direct, is that it is prejudiced against rapid change. Not, of course, that rapid change cannot happen, merely that it is unlikely to do so on any particular topic. As you alluded in your ref to the Founding Fathers, if we compare the relationship the Citizen has to the State today, and that of 1912, I think the Citizen has a much larger range of personal freedom available now than then.

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Eudaimonia