Marriage throughout history = man and woman

I just read a very interesting article regarding same-sex marriage. Here's the quick summary:

Will the government allow me to marry my canary? No. How about my computer? No. Why?

Marriage isn't for men and machines. Marriage isn't for men and animals. That's not what marriage is.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Jones v. Hallahan defines marriage like this: "Marriage was a custom long before the state commenced to issue licenses for that purpose. In all cases, marriage has always been considered as the union of a man and a woman, and we have been presented with no authority to the contrary."

Black's Law Dictionary says this: "Marriage is defined as the civil status, condition or relation of one man and one woman united in law for life for the discharge to each other and the community of duties legally incumbent upon those whose association is founded on the distinction of sex."

Webster's Dictionary says this: "Marriage is a state of being married or being united to a person or persons of the opposite sex as husband and wife. Also the mutual relation of husband and wife abstractly, the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social, legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family."

The point: As a category, by definition, culturally and linguistically and legally, marriage involves not a man and a pet, not a woman and a machine, but a man and a woman. Restricting it as such is not inappropriate discrimination. As a matter of fact, the word "discrimination" doesn't even apply because there is no such thing legally, culturally, socially or linguistically as a marriage that is not between a man and a woman.

While society could reconstruct the cultural institution, the legal definition, and the meaning of the word (as it currently is), it's not fair to point fingers at a person who simply holds the legal, social, and linguistic meaning of a word that the word has always had.

The full article is by Greg Koukl, and is here: http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5727.