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‘Same-Sex Couple’ Does Not Equal ‘Two-Sex Couple’
Same-sex “marriage” is in discussion again, as the US Senate seems intent on forcing the issue further down the throats of resistant Americans. There are multiple arguments for why same-sex couples do not qualify for “marriage.” My primary argument is that same-sex couples cannot produce children.
Marriage is socially and legally recognized for couples of two sexes because such a couple may, even is likely to, create new life, i.e., produce children. Those children blend the two families from which the couple came into a new branch on the tree of humanity and perpetuate that blend far into the future. Throughout history and across cultures, it has been and is the expectation of children that drives marriage. “Romance” or “erotic love” are very late additions to the long and broad history of marriage, and not particularly central to why marriage exists.
“Marriage” establishes a social and legal framework so that the new branch on the tree of humanity formed by creating children not only does not wither and die, but grows and thrives. Society (and the law that society creates to govern human behavior) has both short-term and long-term interests in the children that a coupling by people of different sexes may produce. Short-term, we want a structure in which those children are more likely to be protected, housed, fed, clothed, etc. Long-term, we want a structure in which those children and their children on through the generations bolster the society into which they are born.
It is a biological certainty that a couple consisting of people of the same sex will not produce children. Their coupling will end no later than when one of them dies. Societies (especially ours in the US) have legal systems for contracts for people to form partnerships that involve themselves only, and exist during their lifetimes.
In times or cultures in which women might be limited in their ability to own or control property or to conduct business, marriage also helped to protect women from destitution. That’s not really a concern in 21st-century America. So we’re left with children (or at least the possibility of children) as the public justification for marriage.
“Marriage” exists because of the potential for children emanating from the couple. A same-sex couple cannot produce children. “Marriage” designed for two-sex couples should not be extended to same-sex couples.
Published in Marriage
I don’t know – Roe v Wade was pretty ‘settled’ until it wasn’t.
But I agree. I think the objective is to wedge the Republicans on this – and also to elicit statements from Republicans that can be used in Democrat attack ads – which motivate their base (not the Republicans).
I think you are correct.
In the bad old days, many marriages were arranged and the two people getting married didn’t actually love each other, but were told by their parents that getting married to a person they didn’t love would protect the family honor or keep the family wealthy.
In more modern times, marriage has become about romantic love. I think the modern understanding of marriage is better than the one from the bad old days.
It’s hard to see how a case could ever get before a state or federal court that would contest the Obergefell vs Hodges decision.
In the abortion case, you had many states passing various anti-abortion laws and these laws would be contested in court by a pro-abortion group. So, these cases would eventually work their way to the US Supreme Court. With same sex marriage, how is a case even going to make it to court if not a single Attorney General in the country is contesting same sex marriages?
But I agree that anything is possible.
I would say that the parents need to love each other and then they need to want to have children and follow the precepts of Dr. Allan Schore and Dr. Stephen Porges.
You can either watch videos of those guys or there is a book called healing developmental trauma.
I think it’s really just common sense about what happens between the third trimester and age 3. I don’t think it’s hard to buy at all.
I think this gets to the root of the problem for modernity.
Christianity has always devoutly placed “veritas” before “caritas,” just as we know that it was from the divine mouth of Christ that the breath of the Holy Spirit came, and not the other way around.
Romano Amerio, a Catholic traditionalist wrote those words. His purpose for writing that was “to defend essences against the fickleness and the syncretism of the spirit of the age.” This means defending the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity and their processions, which, as theology teaches, have an unchangeable order: “In the beginning was the Word,” and then, as regards Love, this “ Filioque procedit [proceeds also from the Son].” That is, Love proceeds from the Word, and never the other way around.
So one can conclude that the ultimate philosophical problem facing the Catholic revival that the world needs is that of the order of essences. In so many instances we have abandoned truth for feelings. We’ve lost the basis for what that love should mean.
Benedict XVI wrote an encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est,” in order to restore truth to love: “Today the word ‘love’ is so tarnished, so spoiled and so abused. We must take it up again, purify it and give back to it its original splendor…”
We have lost the meaning of marriage and family. We push aside the truth to satisfy feelings.
If the Catholic church doesn’t want to participate in same sex marriage, that’s there option, as far as I am concerned.
But we aren’t talking about religious marriage. We are talking about civil marriage, which marriages will be recognized by the government, not which marriages will be recognized by this or that church or mosque or temple.
I brought it up because proponents of same sex “marriage ” are demanding Congress enshrine it in statutes, and some of those proponents are gleefully talking up how much they’re looking forward to using the new statute to punish anyone who disagrees and to drive them out of functional society.
That’s what that guy in that Charlie Kirk podcast says. I have a hard time shooting holes in what he’s saying.
I don’t see anything wrong with having a recorded vote in Congress so that voters can learn where their elected leaders stand on the issue of same sex marriage.
Of course some politicians will be punished by voters for taking the “wrong” stand on same sex marriage.
Also, the legislation is going to protect inter-racial marriage.
Can’t help themselves do what? Back when it was a live issue, whenever I was looking around I saw very little understanding or action. Now that it’s not a live issue I see even less of both. I’m just not quite following who is doing what and for what reason.
At that point “marriage” has no commonly accepted meaning nor any reason for social or legal privilege and support, meaning government really does need to stop trying to create a definition for it.
Oh geez, thanks for clarifying this for me. My points hold. Feelings, not facts seem to rule the day, and that is where we are at.
It’s not a case of feelings instead of facts.
You have your feelings about marriage. Others have their feelings about marriage.
Yes, except that civil marriage is entirely a government institution. It serves a societal purpose. One can be in love and even have children yet still not be married. One can be married yet have no children and love.Religious marriage is similar.
Either way neither institution is about telling people who or who not to love. Neither institution is about telling people they must or must not bear children.
What purpose do those institutions serve? Why do they exist if people will love, have sex, and have or not have children whether or not these institutions exist?
You have a more stable society if the government engenders the procreation of non-felon W-2 slaves. Make them and protect them to the extent that the government can do that.
Then with the other hand, the government works against it. That’s just a fact.
Wrong. There is a truth about marriage that has been discarded. Obergefell didn’t redefine marriage, it de-defined it. There is an objective truth about what marriage is. Your feelings can’t change those facts.
Your feelings about marriage don’t change the facts.
You don’t understand and you’re personalizing it.
In the US, there has long been a gentlemen’s agreement between church and state regarding marriage. The state licenses the marriage, and the (church) minister acts as an agent of the state to officiate the wedding. Now, how do you suppose that agreement is going to go now that we, as a society, have redefined this ancient institution?
This is how we do it.
Each church decides which marriages it thinks are legitimate. Call that “religious marriage.”
The government decides which marriages it thinks are legitimate. Call that “civil marriage.”
The two do are not identical. A church might refused to recognize a same sex couple as being married even though the government recognizes this couple as married.
Similarly, a church might recognize a couple as married even if the government does not recognize that couple as being married.
Agreed. Civil marriage aims at positive benefits to society and at a avoidance of negative consequences. Why do individuals participate? Because they benefit too, in different ways. The purpose for the institution is not the same reason that individuals have for participating in it.
Nothing was advanced by saying that homosexual household formation is the same as heterosexual household formation. It was almost completely unnecessary as well.
Love is a hormonal derangement, and a poor basis for anything.
Has anybody proposed this? The OP went out of the way specifically to address this.
Another messiah?
Our civil marriage institution continues to attract over a million couples each year.
Agreed. The two are not identical, but they were both instituted around the same realities of male/female sex. Now that they’re diverging, what might be the friction points? Religious liberty certainly. Additional avenues for government regulation of our lives too.
Dobbs decision notwithstanding, I dont see any reunification of civil and sacramental except maybe in some distant future after society gets reacquainted with the realities involved.
Do you really think a name change is all that’s needed? That the Left coast would be happy?
It’s not the same thing. I’m in the camp that saying it’s the same thing is wrong and stupid. I get that other people are not agreeing with me. I have no idea what to do about it.
I’m not going to get into a big argument, but I do think in the long run changing definitions of things and similar tactics is bad for society in the long run. G Gordon Liddy was all over this in the 90s. Dennis Prager says it. I think the guy on the podcast I posted is very compelling.
Sure, the benefits remain without any actual responsibilities. The question now is what do the rest of us get out of the deal?
Just to clarify, are you saying that people who get married but don’t have biological children are obtaining the benefits of marriage but not shouldering the actual responsibilities of marriage?
What are the actual responsibilities of marriage?
If the populace turns to the state to resolve personal conflict, then the state is going to get involved in the moderation of personal affairs.
That is to be expected.
But the state has been an advocate for child producing, stable couplings since ancient times. Maybe technology changes the calculus on the government derived benefits, but when tech is low, the family unit expends less energy maintaining a stable system than a government would doing the same thing.
No, love is not the most important thing.
It is not necessary to marry who you love. It is necessary to love who you marry.