[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

here is the more interesting question. All sociocultural baggage aside, considering that a civil marriage is essentially an economic contract legally recognized and upheld by the powers and mechanisms of the state, including the penal system, then why does the business community not push forward gay marriage? America has proven that when push comes to shove, prejudice is shallow. We used to have slaves!! We used to have rigidly enforced Jim Crow across the whole damned country!! Now if I were to tell my godchildren who are just small children that the world used to be that way, it would be so absolutely foreign to them as to seem unreal. It would be pure fantasy, beyond their comprehension. That being said, Americans prejudices against homosexuality are not as rigidly indestructable as folks may want them to be. The question is not what do the people want, people are manipulatable one way or the other. The question is what does the business want. Why did slavery end? Simple answer, slavery was dollar for dollar more expensive than a free labor market. The South resisted because for them, the market value of slaves themselves collectively represented more than monetary value of all the other commodities combined. Money talks. In the end, the businesses in the North fuelled the South, and their interests won the day. Why did segregation end? WWII proved that both "minorities" and also women were ridiculously productive and valuable labour force. It was more profitable to find ways to ghettoize America and develop classes of labor than to have folks rotting away in rural settings. So folks were encouraged by incentivization, by recruiting, by outright eviction, to find work in urban environs, to join the business world. So now, honestly, if marriage is really just an economic contract in America, in which insurance companies, employers, and the government determine the costs and benefits of various services, wouldn't it be more profitable in the long run to include more people in an "all-in" approach? Just as with slavery, and then segregation before, it turns out those were unprofitable and unproductive systems. So is discrimination against homosexuality equally then an anachronism from an economic stand point? So that is what surprises me.. That the business interest haven't steam rolled this social change forward..