[Toughy]

By sacred spiritual bond I am talking about pair bonding and a religious or legal aspect is not required to have that bond. I'm so not a believer in a personal god.

Holding tightly to the tools of the patriarchy will never change the patriarchy. Civil and religious marriage are tools of the patriarchy used to control girls and women. Slavery was (and still is) a tool of the patriarchy and was so ingrained in all societies and cultures and endorsed by the law and religion. One probably heard the same arguments when the idea that slavery was wrong started permeating society and cultures around the world. Slavery was centuries old and appeared to be critical to the social structure of the entire world. Guess what...........it wasn't and isn't.

All those legal benefits civil marriage gets don't have to be connected to civil marriage.

There is no reason to believe that social structure is stagnant. Obviously it's not and there is no reason to keep defending the structure of marriage. It's no one's business how I order my life and what kind of family I create and live in.

As long as we keep arguing for our limitations and hold fast to how the patriarchy runs the world, we will keep having those limitations and the patriarchy. Paradigm shifts do happen and it always starts with one person.