Darrell, you say: "marriage ... is about a relationship shared between genders in part in order to raise a family. " First of all, the Bible doesn't exactly say that, it is your interpretation.

More importantly, you don't address the ideas involved. Marriage in the Bible has little to do with how conservative christians define marriage today. Talk about raising a family -- OK, so if a woman doesn't produce children, is it OK in America for a man to have sex with his servant to produce an heir? That's Biblical. Should sex during a woman's menstrual cycle result in excommunication? That's Biblical. If a married man dies childless, should his wife be forced to marry his sister in America? That's Biblical, new testament era.

Let's be honest -- in the Bible woman have no legal rights and basically are property. It is inconsistent with any rational modern society. You have to twist yourself into knots to try and avoid ackowledging this.