On February 26, 2009, Mike Heath of the Family Policy Council gave a speech in which he proclaimed the necessity of configuring our nation’s laws in order to restrict marriage to what he called its “proper definition”:
Families are the basic building block of society. Families bring right thinking and happiness into the world. Society must not privilege the wrong type of families.
The family exists for procreation, and for the rearing and education of children.
Our opponents want the public to believe that same sex marriage is only about law and civil rights. At the heart of the issue, however, is an ethical question which concerns the proper definition of marriage. The reality of procreation, and of child-rearing by man and woman cannot be set aside. They exist in the real world. Marriage reflects an existing reality. To put it very simply, Marriage is what it is, and nothing else.
There is an element of selfishness in the gay rights movement, in that homosexuals already have the right to form domestic partnerships. Let us assume for a moment that same sex marriage does not harm society – which it does, of course. Why should a practice which lacks the elements of marriage — procreation and child-rearing — be called marriage?
Mike Heath is not the only person to declare that “Marriage is what it is, and nothing else” and that any practice “which lacks the elements of marriage — procreation and child-rearing –” should not be called marriage. Margaret A. Somerville declares the same:
Through marriage our society marks out the relationship of two people who will together transmit human life to the next generation and nurture and protect that life. By institutionalizing the relationship that has the inherent capacity to transmit life — that between a man and a woman — marriage symbolizes and engenders respect for the transmission of human life….
The use of law can never be neutral, whether we are enacting, changing or repealing it. We use law in post-modern, secular societies, such as Canada, to challenge or uphold our most important societal values. (Whereas, in the past, our moral and values discussions used to take place in religion, now they take place in our legislatures and courts. One way to regard our Parliament, legislatures and highest courts is as the “secular cathedrals” of our society.)… there is a need — both practical and symbolic — to legislate in relation to reproduction.
And so does “America: the National Catholic Weekly“:
It is often said that we have recently arrived at a new and different sense of sexuality and marriage, but this claim is incorrect; both are what they always were. To say that mutual love is on a par with procreation as an end in marriage is misleading. It is obviously very important, but not as a simply parallel good. Rather, the end of procreation is what specifies this relationship; the physical end of procreation is the first and essential defining character of marriage, and sex is defined as the power to procreate. Then this relationship, so defined, is to be informed with friendship or love, that is, mutual benevolence; but the kind of love it calls for is qualified by the type of relationship it is.
Even in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, people have been quick to introduce mutual love as an end of marriage on a par with procreation. It is, of course, an end of marriage, but not the same kind of end as procreation is. It is not an alternative end, but one based on and specified by the procreative relationship.
People who separate sexuality from procreation, whether in their thinking or their actions, live in illusion. They lie about this matter, to themselves and to others. Furthermore, this error occurs not about some marginal human thing, but about the mystery of our own origins. It is an illusion concerning one of the most powerful human emotions and tendencies. Once we live in delusion about such an important issue, we will inevitably be misguided in regard to many other human things: religion, human relations, laws, governmental policies, moral judgments and even our cultural inheritance. The most obvious truths become obscured.
The above arguments have been made to explain why same-sex marriage should be outlawed by our government, but in their eagerness to not simply declare that “gays and lesbians are icky,” the authors of them make pronouncements that apply beyond gay and lesbian couples to the consideration of what marriage ought to be and how the law ought be used to impose that definition of marriage upon people living in a society. Their broader declaration: marriage is for procreation, the law is a cathedral to protect procreative marriage, and non-procreative marriage should therefore be outlawed by our governments.
If you believe as the above speakers do, then why should men who’ve had themselves sterilized through vasectomy be allowed under law to marry?
If we are to follow the pronouncements of these speakers and apply them thoroughly, such men should not be permitted to marry. And yet we have absolutely no clamor to outlaw marriage for sterilized men. I believe this fact speaks volumes about the intellectual honesty of the “marriage for procreation only” proclamation and the sincerity of those who proclaim it.
“this error occurs not about some marginal human thing, but about the mystery of our own origins.”
Uhhhm, unless this is some sidelong dig at evolution, what are they really saying here? Sure, the catholic church may want to talk about “mystery,” but reproductive biology and developmental psychology are pretty familiar to me, and I’m really not a biologist. Where’s the mystery? Does the catholic church still believe in the whole cabbage patch thing? That still makes less sense than biology to me, even now.
The only destroying of marriage that might happen: when right wing christians and catholics define it narrowly enough, no-one is going to want to get (officially) married anymore, and everyone will just form civil partnerships. And raise perfectly normal children.