http://www.pbsusa.org/wp-content/themes/pbsusa_1/files/2016-01.pdf

and here http://www.virtueonline.org/holy-matrimony-after-obergefell

The description of matrimony as I have sketched it here has been the historic understanding of Western society. That description now has a competitor, which I call “the ethic of intimacy.” The English sociologist Anthony Giddens (The Transformation of Intimacy, 1992) defines the ethic of sexual intimacy in this way: • Sexuality in its modern usage does not mean “two sexes” (the Latin root of “sex” means “to cut in two”) but rather plastic sexuality. “Plastic sexuality is severed from its age-old integration with reproduction, kinship and the generations.”

• Plastic sexuality makes possible confluent love, the opening of one person to another for the purpose of self-realization and self-enhancement. Confluent love is often expressed in terms of spirituality and justified in terms of human rights.

• Whereas romantic love fastens on one “special person,” confluent love is realized in one or more special relationships and hence may be monogamous or polyamorous.

• The special relationship has no external supports and must continually be negotiated in a rolling contract (consider the recent campus “consent” rules). Lest intimacy slide into codependency, each partner in such a relationship must be willing to grow or break apart at any point.

• Traditional marriage has no special claim on intimacy and in fact is often an instrument of codependency to be overcome.