For starters, monogamy in highly socially stratified societies is a very rare social phenomenon. You might want to check out "The Moral Animal" for some discussion of this. The line I remember: "socially stratified monogamous cultures are the true freaks of nature" (paraphrasing here, but I'm close).

However, they do tend to be the norm among highly prosperous and free societies, which takes us to your second point...

Haven't you noticed the strong correlation between wealth and freedom and gay rights? Look who is for gay marriage and who is against it. Genentech, Google, and Apple were were very high profile donors against Prop 8. This isn't just a San Francisco leftist coalition - we're talking the biggest, heaviest hitters in the most innovative fields in America.

I agree with you that Scandanavian countries are lauded a bit too much by the left... but let's compare these economies (where gay rights are supported strongly) with the cultural and economic environment in regions where they are not... oh, say, Afghanistan?

Even in the US, the regions that support gay marriage tend to be attracting the best companies with their top notch workforce. They companies come to them, not the other way around. The regions that don't are still wondering what low skilled factory they're going to be able to attract to replace the textile mill that closed in the seventies.

Seems to me like this one is pretty obvious.

The point is, being wealthy and free does not give one a more "correct" opinion than one who is not.

And I don't see a strong correlation between "wealth and freedom and gay rights". I see a strong correlation between gay rights and political image.

The upper classes carry themselves on with bourgeois family traditions whatever the legal environment. They don't personally see the disastrous consequences of family breakdown because their families remain whole, so they don't give a second thought to liberalizing laws. In poorer areas, the breakdown of family values is a real pressing issue. People see the social catastrophe around them and recognize the further threats.

Wealthier areas are more socially liberal because it's personally irrelevant to them. The areas are wealthy usually because of strongly bourgeois family traditions. Poorer areas are usually more socially fragile.

Now, that doesn't mean you're wrong about the social catastrophe that the failure of marriage brings in poor areas - just because wealthy episcopalians get divorced all the time doesn't mean they experience financial disaster when they do. They're well off enough that they can just split into two (or three or four) different households and still have enough to pay the mortgage, fix the car, buy clothes, and take nice vacations.

But I will definitely disagree that they are wealthy because of strongly bourgeois family traditions. Man, that's the last phrase I would use to describe these people.

For the record, I was in the 10% of the class that lived across town, and didn't come from a family with that kind of money - though I would certainly not describe myself as deprived or from a social class that feared financial catastrophe.

By the way - I'm genuinely interested in hearing why you think that gay marriage would be a threat to marriage in poorer areas. I do agree with you that families are important and should be protected - but why from gays? That one doesn't really make sense to me. It seems like poverty, layoffs, long shifts, poor schools, and so forth threaten families. Adultery and constant conflict (I'm not talking about the truly criminal violence, just the way people can be constantly fighting) can also obviously wreck a marriage - though I think that's often a symptom of the things I listed above.

Gays getting married? Seems like the last thing I'd worry about. This is why the anti prop-8 crowd is so frustrated to see the Catholic, Mormon, and Evangelical churches so actively working to ban gay marriage. It's like: people are hurting, and this is where you put your resources?

1. You seem to have settled on a root cause ghetto shit-holes being the lack of social and cultural bonding rituals between one member of each gender. Generally, I look at cultures like that and see things like oppressive governments, lack of stable, productive economies, and the absence of anything resembling education causing strife? I haven't seen anything to suggest that oppression comes from the lack of observing ritualistic pair-bonds. Perhaps you have data to prove me wrong?

2. Marriage is not a natural system. Nor is culture, except for the tendency for humans to form them. That they manifest at all seems to be a product of human nature; how they manifest seems much more based on environment and random variation. Otherwise, our culture would be indistinguishable from that of everyone elses. Or are you suggesting that we are still in the process of cultural selection, and ours will inevitably prevail?

Looking back it's hard to extrapolate the value of "traditional family values" because we have a lower crime rate, better educated population, and a better economy now than we did back with they where more common.

No, it's been changing fairly rapidly for less than 100 years, and usually with serious unforeseen consequences.

> Look at marriage in nortic countries

I'm tired of hearing about nordic countries. First, they aren't nearly as great as the pom-pom crowd thinks. If you do an apples to apples comparison of middle class whites in northern US states to nordic countries, they're really not so fantastic. And there is plenty of hand-wringing about social degradation in Sweden. They're, what, one generation in to their shift away from more conservative arrangements? Give it time and you'll see problems.

Woman's rights have been on the rise for much longer than 100 years. (I hear they can vote, own property, and even work in the theater.)

I used to be a crime to have sex outside of marriage but that's been on the decline for a long time.

There used to be limits on who could marrie based on class and or race lines. (Duke's don't get hitched with just anyone you know.)

Dowery's used to be common but now it's mostly just the wives family paying for more of the wedding. (This trend has been going on for a while.)

Divorce was introduced by one of the Henry's (he killed most of his other wives but their was one he liked.)

I could go on but most of these trends are a lot older than 100 years. One of the few things that does not really seem to change is infidelity. Genetic tests have shown that married women tend to have about ~20% of their kids from someone other than their husband. This does not seem to have changed much over time.

PS: Nordic marriage traditions go all the way back to the vikings, but they don't look much like "Christian" family values.