Mandatory civil marriage began with the French Revolution, on 9 November 1791 to be precise. It was introduced, not coincidentally, by the same assembly that had just turned ten million landless peasants into heritable proprietors.

No-one will deny that the state has a clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable. It is central to its concern for the upbringing and welfare of the child, for protecting rights and enforcing obligations between family members and to the orderly succession to property. To date, no better, simpler and less intrusive means have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of parenthood coincide. And that is no small thing.

If SSM serves a similar public purpose I have yet to hear it; nor have I heard a principled distinction between marriage and a civil union, especially when the later are becoming increasingly popular with opposite-sex couples (currently 90% in France)

Society establishes marriage rules for more than one reason. It seeks to channel the powerful--and potentially disruptive--force of sexual desire, as well as to promote the furtherance of the species. It also--the advocates of gay marriage are right on this--seeks to recognize and support monogamous love. There are probably more reasons that could be mentioned. If one assumes that marriage exists for procreation, then the state should not allow marriage post-menopause, marriage between couples that are unable to conceive, etc. If the concern is whether the parents will raise the child well, then one might go along with John Stuart Mill who suggested that couples should have to demonstrate that they have the resources to support a child. But I am not sure why one should choose a single end rather than recognizing the multiple ends that marriage serves.

This was an interesting article. But I have a question/objection to put to the argument.

((I have had some trouble, recently, with the moderators not posting my comments [at least, I think that that is the explanation of their non-appearence]. I always try to make my comments polite, I try to make sure that they contribute something to the discussion of the topic in question, and I write them genuinely seeking to hear what people who disagree might say in response – in other words, I write my comments in good faith. I therefore ask you please to post this comment which I have taken the time to write, to contribute to making this website a place of genuine discussion and truth-seeking)).

You say: “Even infertile couples have the potential to conceive a child”. I have heard this before, but never understood it. It seems to me that a pretty good definition of an ‘infertile couple’ is: ‘a couple who are unable to conceive’, or ‘a couple who do not have the potential to conceive’. In what sense does an infertile couple *have* the potential to conceive? They *look* a lot like couples who do have the potential to conceive – they look more like such couples than a gay coupe do – but I don’t think how a couple looks is what grants them potential for anything. I was going to say: they have a womb and a penis, and maybe that ‘having’ is what gives them potential to conceive, despite the fact that they are unable (don’t have the potential) to conceive. But surely a married man and woman may – through accident and tragedy – not have a penis and a womb between them. Would they still count as having the potential to conceive – just because one is a man and a woman.

If we take a human being, we may say: he has the potential to speak. But now imagine that this person is dumb. Perhaps he has no tongue, or perhaps he has had a stroke, and his face is incurably paralysed. Would anyone say: ‘I know that he is unable to speak, but he does nonetheless have the potential to do so’. I don’t think anyone would dream of saying that – it would just be to contradict yourself. If someone insisted on saying that, I would think that what they were really *trying* to convey by sticking to the locution that this man ‘has the potential to speak’ is that: he is a human being. That is, what he is insisting on is that this man, though he cannot speak, is of the kind, of the species, which – for the most part – is able to speak, unlike other species which cannot. So too, when people say that infertile couple have the potential to conceive children – which just seems to me a plain falsehood – I guess they must be trying to express the insight that: an infertile heterosexual couple are a couple ‘of the same kind’ as couples which can conceive. How would we ‘cash out’ this phrase ‘of the same kind’, here? It must refer to their being a man and a woman. But why judge *that* feature of the relationship to be the most relevant one to judge sameness of kind? Why not judge the fact that they are both human? That they are both looking to nurture a new generation? The judgement seems ad hoc – tailored to exclude gay couples, merely because one wants to exclude gay couples, and not because anything objectively significant has been singled out. But the argument that depends on all heterosexual couples having the ‘potential to conceive’ is precisely an argument that tries to appeal to certain objective/natural characteristics to show that there is a difference between gay couples and heterosexual ones. I do not think tis argument works.

All that said – I would very much like to hear anyone’s thoughts on this. I.e. on what they take the phrase “Even infertile couples have the potential to conceive a child” to mean, and what they take its role in an argument against gay marriage to be…

The notion that the government would take as its concern approving the love that one person has for another is spectacularly creepy. Such a policy is totalitarian in both tendency and scope.

@GC: All the statement says is that "infertile" male-female couples sometimes turn out to be not so infertile. "Infertile" is a word that attempts to describe a situation. It is not a guarantor of that description.

OTOH, how is the government supposed to know whether a couple loves each other? And what if the "love" dies? Better the government not get involved in something so abstract.

GC

In regard to marriage, persons of different sex, and the persons of the same sex are not in the same situation because marriage includes the perspective of procreation. With regard to procreation, either natural or imitated in the case of adoption, the first may indeed procreate (or make as if they had procreated), while the latter cannot. If some male-female couples do not procreate, it is for reasons of peculiar to their own individual case (advanced age, pathologic infertility, choice not to have children); that is why the jurists speak of subjective incapacity; they do not form a homogeneous class. Same-sex couples cannot procreate together due to objective incapacity; they are infertile as a class. The difference in situation justifies the difference in treatment, namely access to marriage.

Some of the conditions that affect infertile couples may appear to be irremediable, whereas others are plainly not. Besides, some conditions that, in the past, were irremediable are now treatable and it would be a bold legislator who attempted to anticipate such advances.

When I say that opposite-sex couples can “make as if they had procreated,” I mean that, through adoption, they can present to the child, and to the wider community, the model of the natural (procreative) family, which, some experts assert, makes the establishment of the parental bond between the adopters and the adopted child possible or, at least, easier and spares adopted children the additional difficulty of having to integrate into a “non-standard” family, however loving.

What's the limited government position against civil unions?

In response to GC, while the author would have to explain what he meant by the statement in question, I will offer these thoughts on the issue:

I don't think fertility is the key point. Perhaps it would have made more sense to say, "Even infertile couples have the ability to achieve organic bodily union." It is the ability to achieve this union, whether fertile or not, that distinguishes the opposite-sex couple from the same-sex couple. No matter how fertile same-sex couples are, they simply cannot engage in an organic bodily union, a union that is the natural method by which sexual reproduction is accomplished.

As for the suggestion that the judgment seems ad hoc, "tailored to exclude gay couples," let's look at it from a different perspective: The judgment seems tailored to include only those couples that are naturally capable of sexual reproduction. This to me is not controversial. Even today, with the benefit of modern science, we cannot always know ahead of time which couples will be able to have children and which won't. Therefore, we error on the side of caution and grant certain rights/benefits/protections to all opposite-sex marriages. While we know that some of these unions will not produce offspring, history has shown that the vast majority of them do. History (and science) has also shown that same-sex couples cannot naturally produce children. In other words, it's about the children.

In an effort to keep it short, I'll leave it at that. I realize that much more could be said and that this won't answer all questions or objections.

Alan (writes)

"If one assumes that marriage exists for procreation, then the state should not allow marriage post-menopause, marriage between couples that are unable to conceive, etc"

One hears this case as if it is somehow germane, especially from advocates of same-sex "marriage"

It ignores the reality of what marriage law does and how it does it. Marriage laws are the least kind of intrusive laws in a society. It simply identifies the broad category of those that can procreate (male & female) and promotes & encourages marriage in that one coupling.

Men and women are members of a class that can produce children. While any member of that class may not or cannot produce a child, they remain members of a class that can produce children. Same sex pairings can never produce children. They are members of a class that always and everywhere are incapable of producing children.

Therefore same sex “marriage” necessarily severs marriage from procreation. It both androgynizes the institution and separates it from any necessary link to childbearing.

There are many, many different pairings or assortments of individuals that could benefit from government recognition and subsidy. Roommates, children caring for aging parents, Mothers helping their single daughters raise their children, - all of these arrangements and more have social benefits but none of them are marriages.

The move to change the definition of marriage is a open plot to undermine the institution itself. This is clear because it comes from the cultural left that openly holds as dogma "all family forms are inherently equal" & "their are no differences between men & woman that matter" & "Their is no human nature its all a social construct"

For 40 years traditionalist have been trying to draw peoples attention to the widespread family breakdown that accompanied their sexual revolution.
Suddenly we are expected to believe the cultural left is now interested in "marriage"!

Are they interested in addressing the widespread divorce rates or collapsing rates of new marriage?

Are they interested in addressing the widespread illegitimacy that is now the norm among the african americans and the poor?

Are they interested in the millions and millions of children who grow up in households "without the protections of marriage" or without "two parents who are married"?
No, No, & No?

The cultural lefts sudden interest in marriage goes no further than their effort to redefine it for a small group of citizens?

You would need to be a fool to think that the left cares one bit about our collective marriage culture.

Let's limit government for everyone EQUALLY and ban marriage altogether--gay and straight. I'm totally with the author on this line of thought. Why have laws about marriage at all?

I disagree with the author that government has any interest in promoting procreation. The government shouldn't be promoting anything. It should merely exist to protect private property from theft and private persons from harm from other private persons.

The less government we have the better.

ABOLISH MARRIAGE!

"What's the limited government position against civil unions? "

It's unnecessary and oppressive. It does nothing that can't be accomplished with existing property, estate and medical law, and demands general recognition of a relationship that is commonly expressed in an act many believe to be morally objectionable and physically dangerous counterfeit.

@Cody: The government is not interested in promoting procreation. It is interested in helping to provide children with the best possible start, that is with their natural parents. Other arrangements are also possible but they are not the best.

As the institution of marriage has crumbled, the number of children in poverty has gone up as has the number of women in poverty. That's just a couple of effects of the change. Redefining it completely, particularly with a definition where children are not preeminent is likely to continue that deterioration.

@Cody Simmons.

"Why have laws about marriage at all?"

Because marriage is an exchange that has the potential for fraud in the inducement or execution and that creates joint ownership of property between two differently situated individuals. That contract creates the very type of private property rights you said you want protected and should be protected-a person who enters into marriage does so with expectations from mutual pledges-fidelity, exclusivity, lifelong reciprocal affection and support, and that doesn't even count the fact that a union can result in the creation of powerless third parties-children, who have rights to parental affection and support. In the middle ages, there was a vice crime "alienation of affection" -to be brought against a men seeking a married woman's affections-it existed to prevent the dilution of inheritance rights by children born of the marriage by children born of extramarital dalliances. We don't see it as big deal today, because inheritance rights are curtailed by estate and inheritance taxes and we can determine paternity with DNA testing.

If marriage was indissoluble, then the only laws necessary are those to ensure that entry is made freely by competent and serious individuals. Unfortunately, it's not and we need laws to ensure equitable dispute resolution, equitable dissolution and protection of property.

"I disagree with the author that government has any interest in promoting procreation."

Although government has grown to monstrous proportions, with a reach that is unreasonable-both in its intrusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, government exists to promote order-and although we seem to be losing it, an order that exists to allow liberty (not license). An element of order is continuity, and continuity requires progeny, since, as it was once quipped, "in the long run, we are all dead". Indifference to the future is foolishness and a large part of why "Eurostan" may yet emerge and why Japan increasingly resembles a retirement community.

@GC. There is no such thing as an infertile couple. Fertiliity - like age and sex - is an element that exists at the level of the individual. Homosexual sexual relationships render an individual's fertility level irrelevant. It only becomes relevant in a heterosexual sexual relationship. Two women cannot have children together. This is despite the individuals, and because of the relationship. If a man and a woman cannot have children together, it will be because of the individual/s, and despite the relationship. Marriage is the relationship, not the individuals.

Ray Ingles asks

“What's the limited government position against civil unions?”

None at all that I can see.

When the PACS [pacte civile de solidarité] or civil union was introduced in France, there was a debate amongst the jurists as to whether it should be treated as part of the Law of Persons or the Law of Obligations (Civilians, in particular, love this sort of debate). Most inclined to the latter view; they are contracts and nothing more. Thus, unlike marriage, they do not create inheritance rights or otherwise affect third parties, through mutual rights of maintenance, such as exist between parents-in-law and children-in-law.

It is for these reasons that PACSs have become increasingly popular with opposite-sex couples, who account for 90% of PACSs

Cody Simmons says

“Why have laws about marriage at all?

Because, even if the state has no interest in promoting procreation, it has a clear interest in determining legal filiation. As I said before, “It is central to its concern for the upbringing and welfare of the child, for protecting rights and enforcing obligations between family members and to the orderly succession to property.”

DNA testing is an imperfect substitute, when it is possible for a woman to become an heiress in her issue centuries after her death (as recently happened in the case of one of the largest landed estates in Scotland)

The salient fact #1 is that marriage is a pre-existing institution. That is, it existed as a separate entity long before the establishment of government--certainly before the government of the United States. Therefore, the state's jurisdiction over marriage should be limited.

The salient fact #2 is that marriage is an institution that has developed through the ages--subject to the evolving trial and error in search of the best relational constellation. As a result, marriage has its own internal clusters of purposes and meanings at once complex and then simple with inconsistences which many times defy logic but are long honored by real people instead of rationalistic abstractions.

The salient fact #3 is that the only way same-sex-marriage can exist is through the coercive and intrusive power of the state. The state can only make homosexual relations marriages through a legal fiction. Be that as it may, without a tyrannical exercise of government power, homosexual marriage would be no more than the oxymoron it has long been.

Mick Lee

You make like the elegant summary given by Lord Stowell in Dalrymple v Dalrymple (1811), which explains the various elements that have produced the Western concept of marriage

“Marriage in its origin is a contract of natural law; it may exist between two individuals of different sexes although no third person existed in the world, as happened in the case of the common ancestors of mankind. It is the parent not the child of civil society. In civil society, it becomes a civil contract regulated and prescribed by law and endowed with civil consequences. In most civilized countries, acting under a sense of the force of sacred obligations, it has had the sanctions of religion superadded; it then becomes a religious, as well a natural and civil, contract; for it is a great mistake to suppose that because it is the one, therefore it may not likewise be the other. Heaven itself is made a party to the contract and the consent of the individuals pledged to each other is ratified and consecrated by a vow to God.... though it is not unworthy of remark that amidst the manifold ritual provisions made by the Divine Lawgiver of the Jews for various offices and transactions of life there is no Ceremony prescribed for the celebration of marriage.”

It’s a fallacy to say that the government interest is in promoting procreation when, in actuality, the government interest is in promoting (and preserving) the institution of marriage, an institution which *presupposes* procreation as a general social fact. The government interest is in promoting the procreative institution of marriage, and relatedly in creating a stable environment for raising children. To refer to a government interest in promoting procreation itself is simplistic and reductionist. SSM advocates talk that way because they love a straw man, as ideologues even more than normal people tend to do. Opponents of SSM who talk the same way are simply doing a poor job of defending traditional marriage.

My answer to GC’s very good question is that only opposite-sex coupes have either an actual or ideal capacity to procreate. An ideal capacity is the one that sterile and aged opposite-sex couples have. If their bodily organs were functioning properly and optimally, they would be able to procreate. With same-sex couples, by contrast, there is no conceivable “proper and optimal” function of the bodily organs that can lead to procreation, except for the sophistical and laughably ad hoc scenario of “Bob and Tom could procreate if Bob had been born a woman.”

In the context of procreation-presupposing marriage, it is morally relevant and extremely significant that only same-sex couples are *inherently* incapable of procreating. The reason for barring them from marriage is that their inclusion makes no sense, given the general fact of procreation and what it says about the nature of marriage.

I would argue that SSM is per se harmful to marriage because it degrades the institution by equating it conceptually with cohabitation. In cohabitation, commitment (or love, or caring, or something comparable) is what it’s all about, not procreation. Contrast this with the fact that only procreation explains the rigorousness of marriage--of the type of intimate relationship that marriage is--in sharp contrast to commitment (with all of its varying and type-vaporizing degrees). In that way, SSM causes harm as such to the institution of marriage.

There’s a lot more that can be said about this criterion-of-cohabitation/criterion-of-marriage argument against SSM. William Haun says some of it in his excellent post, and I say more in an article in the current issue of *Chronicles* magazine.

A long post - I hope people won't mind. But I'm a late contributor to this thread, so perhaps I will not discommode too many.

New Zealand, like the US, has caught the "gay marriage" disease. There is a Bill that is before a Parliamentary committee at the moment for "public consultation". This is almost certainly an empty gesture - there are many more Parliamentarians on this particular bandwagon than off it.

The Bill proposes changing the public definition of marriage. The same contempt for religiously-informed moral values prevails here, just as it does in North America. Probably only secular arguments against SSM have any chance of even being listened to, let alone acted upon. Legislators' understanding of even sociological truths appears to be nonexistent, however.

The MP who introduced the Bill, went through the motions and acknowledged that the origin of marriage as a social institution predates history, all religions and all governments. To me, marriage would appear to have acquired its standard form 10,000 years ago, and possibly earlier. So, marriage as a social invention dates to the Upper Paleolithic era at the latest, and its fundamental form has not changed over millennia.

And here is a curious thing. I have nowhere seen in any of the discussions about gay marriage any thought about the signifcance of that non-variation in marriage's fundamental form. Marriage did not emerge in different forms in different regions, but seems everywhere to have been based on the relationship of one man and one woman. Furthermore, the world-wide norm has been that relationships were expected to be long-term, with a further social expectation that the sexual relations of the woman and the man would be exclusive, and that the raising of the children borne by the woman would be the responsibility of both parents.

Clearly, some men would have had relationships of one kind or another with other women. Some women would have had children by men other than their recognised husbands. The length of marriages was limited by much shorter life spans. Men in positions of power could assemble harems, although even then, one of the sexual partners was recognised as the main wife. So, the general cultural expectation in all cultures and in all parts of the world does not appear to have varied significantly. (Two Members of Parliament, in their speeches introducing the Bill to the House, tried to make the case that gay marriage had a centuries-old history: they cited Nero’s “marriage” to a male slave. Presumably, these are the sort of Solons who will next claim that the same man's dalliance with his sister should lead to the public recognition of incest as yet another lifestyle choice we all should countenance. "Why, who are we to say that brother-sister marriage is not a valid, loving relationship?")

Anyway, the fact that marriage did not take different forms, and that the normal relationship has been given social recognition by peoples who differ radically in most other respects, could be characterised simply as being a curiosity of human development. But surely, the traditional uniformity of the definition of marriage in different parts of the world is evidence to which extraordinary weight should be given. The evidence conveys a message that children of traditionally-defined marriage were more likely to survive.

To re-state the case, it is a fair assumption that relationships between women and men took different forms long ago, in different parts of the world. Only one form of female-male relationship, however, became normalised. One man, one woman relationships could only have become the norm because the children of such unions disproportionately survived. I would further suggest that this disproportionate survival would not have been solely because of physical factors (better or more food, etc.) alone. Surely, the psychological and social advantages of the presence of parents would have been even greater. The surviving children them mimicked what they had witnessed in infancy and childhood in their own later lives. So, perhaps, did the surviving children of other forms of relationship. Based on the evidence of survival, however, there were fewer of them as a percentage of the total population with each generation.

Granted, over the course of hundreds of years, even a small survival advantage could, in the end, result in normal marriages out-competing, in survival terms, other parental relationships. The evidence that the survival advantage was non-trivial, however, is that normal marriage did not vary significantly, anywhere, whether populations inhabited tropical or sub-tropical regions, or lived in temperate or cold climates, or on islands or continents. So even though the natural environments parents inhabited could vary radically, with food supply plentiful in some environments to the point that parental pairs were probably not absolutely physically necessary, the cultural environment established by one woman, one man, long-term, sexually-exclusive relationships became near-uniform.

The current effort given to re-defining marriage as a social institution that can include male-and-male, or female-and-female, relationships, therefore omits all consideration of the welfare of natural children. (To be sure, this thought is very far from being original.) The supporters of the idea that female-and-female and male-and-male relationships should receive the same social recognition as traditional marriages are instead much more focused on current adult relationships than on potential parental relationships with natural children.

There is an argument that unless marriage is re-defined, some citizens, New Zealanders and Americans, will continue to “unequal” under the law. Yet New Zealand law, and US law I strongly suspect, recognises many different types of inequality. Some are not entitled to a driver’s licence, or only conditionally. Some are not entitled to vote (even if just for age-related reasons). Dozens of other perfectly justifiable reasons for discrimination exist (although I gather that the right of the transgendered to use the lavatories of either conventional gender is sometimes being claimed.) But such claims that legal equality must banish all distinction are being made without any recognition of inter-generational equity: can a social arrangement that originally emerged because it self-evidently promoted children’s survival and welfare be further deconstructed than it already has been, without consequence for children? To ask the question is really to answer it.

The concept of the traditional family has been under prolonged assault in the United States and New Zealand for more than 50 years now. Divorce has been liberalised. Various birth control technologies rendered pre-marital sex less likely to result in pregnancy. Post-religious "philosophies" predominate. All these changes have been accepted because they appeared to some to confer benefits, and significant numbers of Americans and New Zealanders were in favour of taking advantage of them. While that is the case, as individuals’ tastes of the moment and fleeting impulses have come to take near-automatic precedence over longer-term social needs, the progressive weakening the institution of marriage as traditionally defined, and therefore the family, has also incurred costs.

The available evidence for the contribution of a traditional family structure for the welfare of children is clear in several respects, and unclear on only one. The association between child poverty and single parent families, as is widely known but less widely acknowledged, is marked. Children from single parent families also fare less well in educational and socio-economic terms than those from families with both a mother and a father. The sole area of uncertainty is whether stable same sex marriages may rival, in child welfare terms, unstable male-female marriages. But I remain sceptical about that.

On balance, the weight of evidence is that the cultural evolution and development of traditional marriage provided and provides a superior environment for the safe raising of children. Whatever social benefits are being sought by the proposed re-definition of the common understanding of marriage, there should also be a recognition that those benefits will exact a price, and based on recent social history, a fearsome price as well.

A point alluded to in the debate surrounding the introduction of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill into New Zealand's Parliament for its first reading was that the law surrounding marriage has been much-altered over time. Such matters as the right of women to own property independent of their husbands, to conduct business independently, and women’s rights before, during and after divorces, have all been modified. I doubt that anyone who is not a modern-day Nero would want to return to the status quo ante those modifications were made. Changes in marriage-related law, however, did not overturn the commonly-held social understanding of marriage itself.

The argument that broadening the definition of marriage to cover male-and-male and female-and-female relationships is necessary to recognise homosexuals’ human and civil rights is, after the passage of legislation that recognises civil unions, invalid. Same-sex partners are able to make exactly equivalent arrangements for nominating next of kin, inheritance, etc., as wives and husbands.

So the object of those promoting the re-definition of marriage would appear to be merely to increase the social approbation of same sex couples. And that is given as a sufficient reason to continue the piecemeal attack on a fundamental social institution.

Another matter rarely-acknowledged in all “conversation” about same sex marriage is the mundane one of numbers, what level of supposed inequality is being imposed the existence of the traditional view of marriage? Rough calculation supports a view that re-defining marriage will only directly affect an extremely small fraction of the population. Assuming that as many as four percent of New Zealanders are gay, lesbian or transgendered, and that as many as ten percent of them may eventually marry, and that as many as fifty percent of them will remain married, the re-definition will directly affect .002% of New Zealand’s population. Would the numbers in North America be very different? Here, I've heard it argued that because the numbers directly affected are so small, re-definition of marriage should therefore not be opposed. Notional “equality” should instead be imposed, in part because the numbers directly involved make the re-definition of marriage comparatively low-risk. Another non-original thought: once fundamental social definitions begin to be altered, further changes are inevitable.

After the first re-definition of marriage, second and third re-definitions will surely follow (demonstrated overseas in countries as disparate as Brazil and, informally, the United Kingdom). Only the time frame for follow-on demands cannot be forecast. Even so, the first demand will almost certainly be for the recognition of polygamy (in spite of the damage that inevitably does to the very concept of the equal status of women). The second is likely to be for the recognition of “group” marriage (in spite of the catastrophe that will be for any children raised amid the moral cacophony of a group, rather than an extended, family structure).

I am resigned to the fact that the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Bill will probably become New Zealand law. At the same time, I can only wonder at the likely departure of a majority of this country’s elected representatives from any appreciation – any true appreciation whatsoever – of moral and sociological sense.

I noted George Wiegal's suggestion that perhaps the Church should withdraw from witnessing the civil aspects of marriage. Perhaps that could be a useful signal to North American society that the religious and secular paths towards good lives have now separated so much that the two different sorts of people can no longer wwalk together.

Christopher Clayton,

I haven’t read all of your comment--it’s so long (but not wordy--just dense with insights). I don’t yet share your and Weigel’s pessimism. I think the argument against SSM can be considerably strengthened. With this in mind, I would make the following points.

The question which GC’s comment raises is: Is there a distinction between sterile and aged opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples that is not ad hoc? We engage in ad hocery whenever we seek a logical solution (to either a practical or abstract problem) by haphazardly pulling things out of thin air. It’s one of the most bogus, but also most alluring, forms of reasoning. In the SSM debate, I believe it’s the supporters of SSM who are overwhelmingly guilty of it.

An aspect of proper function is the fact of malfunction. I think everyone will agree that the “abuse” (malfunction) does not abolish the “use” (proper function). In which case there’s nothing remotely ad hoc about saying sterile and aged opposite-sex couples have an ideal capacity to procreate. Whereas it *is* ad hoc to say Tom and Bob have an ideal capacity to procreate because they would be able to bear children if only Bob was born as a girl. This is why marriage--presupposing as it does the general fact of procreation--properly includes all opposite-sex couples and no same-sex couples.

To insist that marriage can equally include same-sex couples is almost like saying that black is white and white is black. The only way to show that this is not so is to show that there’s no difference between the ideal capacity of opposite-sex couples and the ideal capacity of same-sex couples to procreate. The analysis of ad hocery shows that this is impossible to do, and thus the claim that SSM is illogical (or unreasoned) is correct.

IMO, same-sex marriage is much more clearly a bad idea than legalized abortion is a bad idea. I oppose the legalization of abortion for what I believe are very good reasons. It’s just that I think the arguments on the other side are quite strong in their own way. Ultimately, I believe the strongest basis for opposition to abortion is a belief in the wrongness of infanticide (as opposed to metaphysical arguments about the nature of persons). But for various reasons, this just shows how complex the abortion debate is.

Same-sex marriage is built on a foundation of question-begging and caricature. It’s stunning how much the advocates of SSM beg the question of whether opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples are similarly situated with respect to marriage--their talk of “marriage equality,” in this sense, is simple-minded propaganda. It’s also impressive how they think they can ignore a nuanced understanding of the connection between marriage and procreation, preferring inaccurate and even ridiculous caricatures of this all-important connection.

To give an example, procreation is not the “sine qua non” of marriage, as the author of what Richard Posner has described as “the best book on same-sex marriage” calls it. If even the most sophisticated supporters of SSM are prone to such inaccuracies, what are we supposed to think? (Procreation is the raison d`etre of marriage--a very different thing from sine qua non. Boiled down, this means the general fact of procreation is the reason for the existence of the institution of marriage--or that the marriage institution minus procreation as a general fact about that institution is meaningless, an empty shrine.)

Re: "nor have I heard a principled distinction between marriage and a civil union"

1. "Civil" unions only exist in a handful of States. Marriage exists in all 50 States.

2. "Civil" unions are not portable from State to State. Marriage is.

3. Some States specifically forbid "civil" unions. (Some States even changed their Constitutions to forever ban them, along with "domestic partnerships" or "any relationship resembling marriage".)

4. "Civil" unions vary from State to State, among the handful of States that do allow them.

5. "Civil" unions come with NONE of the 1,176 Federal "effects that flow from marriage" (thanks to the mis-named and soon-to-be-found Un-Constitutional "Defense" of Marriage Act).

If you've really not heard of these distinctions, you are woefully un-informed. (Mis-informed?)

GC: "You say: “Even infertile couples have the potential to conceive a child”. I have heard this before, but never understood it. "

Let me try to explain. Fertility is actually irrelevant, rights do not depend on ability. These days, with technology, there is really no such thing anyway, even a dead person could procreate. What matters is if the public approves of it or prohibits it. That's why a brother and sister, who are probably quite fertile, are nevertheless not allowed to marry.

Same-sex couples should not be allowed to procreate. Being allowed to procreate is the sine qua non of marriage and should remain so.

If a state offers Civil Unions at all, they should certainly not give "all the rights of marriage" as same-sex couples should never be given equal conception rights to a married couple. Civil Unions (if we must have them) should be defined as "marriage minus conception rights."

"1. "Civil" unions only exist in a handful of States. Marriage exists in all 50 States."

Civil unions render all the same benefits of marriage to same-sex couples except the title of Marriage. There is greater support for civil unions than redefining Marriage.

2. "Civil" unions are not portable from State to State. Marriage is."

Same-sex marriage isn't either. Almost 3 dozen states have amendments that define Marriage between a man and a woman.

3 "Some States specifically forbid "civil" unions. (Some States even changed their Constitutions to forever ban them, along with "domestic partnerships" or "any relationship resembling marriage".)"

Then don't move to those states. A state really is under no obligation to grant benefits to anyone. People have spoken and their constitutions were adjusted accordingly.

4"Civil" unions vary from State to State, among the handful of States that do allow them."

All states with civil unions have "universalized" them so that they mirror Marriage in all but in name. Anything they may have left out can be granted through a written will.

"Civil" unions come with NONE of the 1,176 Federal "effects that flow from marriage" (thanks to the mis-named and soon-to-be-found Un-Constitutional "Defense" of Marriage Act)."

Read my previous point. This little myth has been debunked.