Answering critics of traditional (actual) marriage:

 Traditional marriage is as traditional marriage does, and has done for hundreds of years, reaching back thousands of years.

For us in America, traditional marriage is defined from the rise of the western ideals that stem from remnant Roman social thought plus dark-age Roman Catholic cultural base that then entered into a discussion from enlightenment and Protestant reformation sources - the impact made a homogeneity centered on the nuclear family as paramount, and marriage as that between a man and a woman given in the context of responsible community witness as well as fidelity, fealty and love. This was seen as the age or covenant of grace improvement by God's providence over the law - the law that is ripped terribly out of context by the "upworthy.com" article, by the way.

Take first the kinsman redeemer law. It is illustrated in context with the book of Ruth. In the time of Ruth, having a husband was very important for a woman's well being. Today, where economies are more - well - basic, females are cheapened, often female children are discarded, killed, because the need for the family in their generations and for their survival is for males to grow up and take on the rigors of physical work. In the context of an agrarian society, without industry and automation to provide productivity in place of physical labor, the priority was to provide for women and shelter their value against the downward momentum toward discarding or marginalizing their basic interest needs.

The situation of forcible sex, a type of rape, is also taken in the context of an agrarian community in the country where a father is providing for his daughter: it is absolutely not the same as violent stranger rape today - not the same thing as a violent attack whereby a sexual union is not even primarily a part of the attack - there are other provisions in the law regarding the physical wounding of victims. (Read the full chapter, other chapters, as if you actually cared about what the Bible says other than to attack its reputation) Then also notice that it is the raping male who is by law required to "marry" the victim - again, in the community of that time, with a known person who would be tasked to provide for her because he defiled her and destroyed her prospects for gaining a husband after that is done and known. The ongoing marriage would be established and watched in that community, with the victim's interests again a priority.

It is about how things were done in that very different time and culture, with the situation of a mediatorial theocracy delivering the messianic line for the world to be blessed that the laws were placed. Then it is progressive revelation and additional dispensations that lead to the fullness of time where Christ is given, his sinless life and vicarious death on the cross to pay the penalty of sin is provided, then the resurrection of Christ from death that proves he is the fulfillment of the law. If you wanted to search the scriptures with a mind to receive with understanding the testimony of the law and the prophets, then your motivation would guide you to all truth. Blessings.