Same as marriage but different from the rest?

The SSM idea does not share with the marriage idea the centrality of sex integration. Nor the centrality of responsible procreation.

SSMers remind us of this all the time. The SSM campaign has pretty much denounced the importance placed on marriage as social institution and instead has emphasized marriage as legal creature owned by Government. Well, for the sake of argument, let's suppose that SSMers are right on these points.

What then is the SSM idea's essential features? That is, what is the stuff without which SSM would not be SSM, in their view of Government's creature?

SSMers continue to fail to distinguish the type of relationship they have in mind (aka a subset of the one-sexed scenario) from the rest of the types of relationships and types of living arrangements that are also in the nonmarriage category. They fail to show that the essentials of the SSM idea are 1) shared by marriage and 2) not shared by nonmarriage.

Many don't even bother to try.

On the the other hand, they unfailingly begin by pointing at Government licensing while skipping past the type of thing that is licensed. That is, the pre-government thing; the pre-political and pre-legal thing that exists before pinning the label and license and status on it.  Thus this creature of government does no exist in its own right; not only is it owned by Government it is wholly created by Government.

They start with the status and not with justification for establishing the status. This is backwards but let's take it as correct, again for discussion.

SSM supporters do openly emphasize gayness. They do seek societal endorsement of gayness -- via license and special status for the SSM idea. Yet they insist that objective and societal reasons for showing preference for marriage are superseded by the subjective and personal motivations of those who demand that society issue licenses.

With such thinking, SSM argumentation runs a winding path upon which many SSMers become disorientated and lost. But ultimately they are blunt: the essentials of SSM, and thus of marriage, are not the business of society, they say. For them, the SSM idea is far more a matter of privacy rather than public regard. Government is not society, they assert, and what's more, Government dictates to society.

So they seek to move the heavy arm of Government to coerce civil society.