Among many libertarians and a few progressivists, the concept of marriage privatization – where the state does not involve itself in the definition of marriage – has gained increasing worth as the debate over LGBT rights continues to intensify in the United States. Of course, a main fear over the concept is the possibility that religious groups could run amok with their own definitions and performances of family relationships which would clash with other religious groups’ definitions and performances, particularly as those who advocate for marriage privatization have not as forcefully argued for a secularization of the institution (in which religious groups’ performances are not recognized by the state, which only recognizes privately-composed contracts).

In a similar vein, however I’ve noticed that, among furries, there is a growing tendency to create "online families", or structures of mostly-online friends who are assigned specific family roles (i.e., father, mother, brother, sister, nephew, niece, uncle, aunt, master, etc.) of an arbitrary nature. Usually, I assume, these "online families" are often intended to keep close, persistent online relationships which both transcend the normal "friend" which is standard across most websites with some socializing aspect (even non-social networks such as large art galleries) and serve as go-tos for the members who are very likely involved (or mostly uninvolved) with their own real-world families. 

An example of the online family or "furfamily" is shown by SexyWhiteTiger’s profile on Fur Affinity. His furfamily is very highly structured and public, so everyone who passes by his profile knows about the structured relationships between the users listed in the profile page. So is that of Badbear23 or chewymusicwolf, or any of these families listed on DeviantART.

Plus, when furfamilies are broken up by extenuating circumstances, the "patriarchs" of these families probably take it most personally and express the most vocal outrage. See, as examples, the profile of SexyWhiteTiger’s "nephew" KitReynard (a.k.a. kitsuneko1976), who was forcefully disappeared by either KitReynard’s real-life (Catholic?) mother or the Los Angeles Police Department due to the fact that he was listed as 16 (a juvenile age in California law), and his fur-uncle’s outrage in the comments to the journal posted by someone from the LAPD to Kit’s account.

Of course, I can only assume that furfamilies are intensified or augmented by virtual worlds like Second Life, in which furfamilies and furharems are developed in order to run both whole virtual residencies and their corresponding SL groups. One furry whom I’ve met has confirmed such a structure, although he intends to keep the SL furharem relationship separate from his real-life existence.

Back to the point: these furfamilies, furharems and the like could be formed for not much more than role-playing purposes or for idyllic stylings of one’s friends list for the moment’s closest friends and associates, but the fact that these are publicly declared as somewhat-persistent (if not unchanging) relationships on an hierarchical basis by so many furries may lend credence to the idea of family privatization, in which one can define a mate, adopt a child, and even adopt/marry their own familial superiors and semi-parental authority figures without much else than a profile posting on a social networking website.

This, of course, can only be intensified by Facebook apps such as FamilyLink, which allow a user to confirm other users as particular family positions and publicly post these connections to their profiles. 

And all of this is accomplished on mostly-for-profit channels without involvement from the government or religious groups, even though it is comparatively-rare for the members of these furfamilies to ever meet in close, long-term proximity to each other.

Perhaps the proximity and longevity issue for virtual families is improved by the promotion of virtual houses akin to those in Second Life (or even akin to furry houses), at least since the members of these families possess family-specific enclosed locales in which they start their virtual excursions over the Internet. Proximity may be most solidified by the extension of SL and other MMO environments onto mobile (and wearable) devices, since the attachment of the online families’s members to each other will then become persistent – prevalent, even – in real life as well.

But what matters, over all, is that these online families must be able to declare their hierarchies publicly, in some venue that allows all who may care to see who each member sees as their own such and such authority figure, mate or subordinate/child.

This may best establish online families as influences in their members’ online lives (and, perhaps, their real lives as well).