It will never be ethical or good public policy and there is no reason to allow it that would justify any risk or cost and bad effect on society, and it would have many.

I tend to come from a libertarian (note: small-l) perspective where I think things should be permitted unless there’s a convincing case against them. So I’d like to hear more about the “risk or cost and bad effect on society”. What are some specific harms that would come from this, in your view?

John Howard,

Why not? I will admit that there is something potentially frightening about scientists manipulating human genes in the lab, but why is it worse to manipulate and combine the genes of two men or two women than it is to manipulate the genes of a man and a woman?

Ray Ingles,

I have written a few messages in this thread that did not make it through, and I am at a loss to explain why.

Marriage should always approve in principle of the conception of offspring together, a marriage should never be prohibited. Do you guys agree or disagree?

If a human body is created from the genetic material of two women, that body can only ever be a female.

Well, yes, but people can be female and human too. I don’t quite follow the relevance of this point.

And it can also only ever be a sister to the two women. It is not a member of the next generation.

A sister to two women from two different family lines?

With, er, in vivo reproduction, half the genes come from one parent, and half from another. The child is, indeed, genetically distinct from either of the parents.

In a hypothetical situation like, say, the fusion of two eggs… half the genes would come from one woman, half from the other. The child would be genetically distinct from both women. To my knowledge, no genetic test would even in principle be able to differentiate such a child from one with a more traditionally-derived genetic complement.

What do you take as the definition of “a member of the next generation”, exactly?

(As an aside, I did try to respond to John Howard, but my comment was rejected. I have no idea why.)

If a human body is created from the genetic material of two women, that body can only ever be a female. And it can also only ever be a sister to the two women. It is not a member of the next generation. The two women have not procreated at all. Ditto cloning. If a human body is made from the body of one human, the created body can only be a replica of the original. It is not a member of the next generation.

Have more faith in nature :) A same-sex marriage really is physically impossible. As impossible as an impermanent marriage (no parent can step outside of the body of their child and cease to be physically related to that child) or a marriage between any number of people other that two (no third/fourth/etc person can step into the body of a child. In the case of one person parenthood, that child can only ever be a clone). Marriage is the physical state of parenthood: permanent, heterosexual (containing both sexes) and exclusive (containing only two people). Only one relationship can achieve that state: one man and one woman.

Anyway, the question is this: what happens when the state creates a legal fiction? The answer is that the state has to legally erase physical reality. The state knows full well that in redefining marriage it is redefining the legal understanding of parenthood itself, transforming a legal recognition of a physical reality (permanent, heterosexual, exclusive) into a purely legal concept. Every single father and mother has the legal relationship with their own children reconfigured. Natural, objective, unalienable rights are replaced with state-defined, state-granted, subjective rights. This is pure logic. It is not an opinion. And this is the reason marriage is being redefined. It is the reason why “Equal marriage” is the first state-imposed civil rights movement.

The definition of marriage is the definition of parenthood. It really is as simple as that. It doesn’t quite deal with John’s worry though. See below.

gentlemind,

First, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not legally binding on anyone.

Article 16
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

Even were this somehow legally binding, I do not see in it any guarantee that same-sex couples who are permitted to marry are given some kind of right to procreate that must be invented by scientists.

I think you would have to demonstrate that “found a family” must be interpreted to mean “produce genetic offspring biologically related to both spouses even if they are incapable of doing so unaided.” If it meant something like that, infertile heterosexual couples and elderly heterosexual couples (in which the women are past childbearing age) would have the same right you claim would be conferred on same-sex couples and could demand science devise a way for those who cannot reproduce sexually to have offspring created for them in the lab.

The future of of assisted reproductive technology, cloning, and genetic engineering is well worth discussing. However, it seems to me irrelevant to the current discussion on same-sex marriage. For those who are concerned that science will be attempting things it has no business attempting—devising alternate ways to create a zygote other than bringing together an egg and a sperm—let them deal with that as an issue. If they feel it should be banned, let them ban it. But such technology doesn’t even exist, and may never. To use it as an argument against same-sex marriage strikes me as irrelevant to the current debate and rather quixotic.