Procreation and reasoning about marriage

It's amazing how truth is twisted by sin. It is obvious to common observation that the main purpose of sexuality is reproduction. Human sexuality, made more than physical by the spiritual dimension of our nature, is also meant to increase intimacy. Pleasure is certainly part of sexuality, but it is also part of eating. Yet, eating just for pleasure without concern for health (the main purpose of eating) is considered a vice. Human food consumption is also made more than physical by the spiritual dimension of our human nature. Yet, to regularly neglect health for the sake of social eating is also considered a vice. The natural law principle being applied here is that actions should be performed according to their purpose. We apply this principle correctly to eating, but when it comes to sexuality we throw it out the window. Our culture accepts "recreational sex" for pleasure only, and exults sterilized sexuality as a path to intimacy and self-actualization. The truth about sexuality has become so twisted that reproduction is even scoffed and scorned.

Truthdig - Reports - Ellen Goodman: Wedding Bells Only for Breeders?
Ellen Goodman, a liberal commentator for the Boston Globe (her modernist ideas are often criticized in this blog) is one cultural voice that loudly scorns the reproductive purpose of sexuality. A couple of years ago (hey, I never claimed that this blog would be your source for the latest breaking news !), she wrote an editorial specifically deriding the very idea that sexuality is meant for procreation - what she calls "procreationist marriage." Goodman - whose favorite argument strategy is ridicule rather than reason - attempts to apply a principle of logic, bringing an argument to its logical conclusion:

Well, if that’s true isn’t it time for the legislatures in Washington and in New York, which issued a similar ruling against same-sex marriage this summer, to follow their own logic? If marriage is for procreation, shouldn’t they refuse to wed anyone past menopause? Shouldn’t they withhold a license, let alone blessings and benefits, from anyone who is infertile? As for those who choose to be childless: Nothing borrowed or blue for them. Indeed, the state could offer young couples licenses with sunset clauses. After five years they have to put up (kids) or split up.

Goodman's error is a misunderstanding of the natural law principle. The principle does not state that an action should be performed according to its purpose, not that the purpose of the act must be fulfilled. This is an important point. A male and female couple who are infertile and enter into marriage can still perform the marital act according to its purpose. Because they are male and female, they are naturally ordered to procreation. For example, "sub-fertile" couple can still possibly conceive a child, no matter how unlikely. If the woman has had a hysteroctomy or is post-menopause, conception is pretty much impossible and pregnancy is out of the question. However, a principle is not formed around its exceptions. In these cases it is enough to be male and female. The inability for the marital love to express itself in new life should be a sorrow for an infertile couple (perhaps less so for older couples, but a tinge of sorrow might be appropriate). It certainly was for my wife and I. To purposely render a marital relationship sterile - through contraception, homosexuality, etc. is to choose a stagnated love that cannot create new life. Therein lies the error.

Goodman offers another erroneous attempt to take a position to its logical conclusion:

Of course the states’ other interest is in families “headed by the children’s biological parents.” Why then give licenses to the couples who are raising 1.5 million adopted children? We can ban those blended families like, say, the Brady Bunch. And surely we should release partners from their vows upon delivery of their offspring to the nearest college campus.

Now Goodman enters into the ridiculous. To say that the state's interest is in keeping children with their biological families is not to preclude adoption. As an adoptive parent of two children, I will tell you that we wish for our children's sakes that they could have been born into healthy biological families and raised there. We dread the day when we have to tell our children that they were conceived in circumstances where family love was not possible. However, we rejoice that we are able to give that love to these children. The ideal would be for adoption not to be necessary, but the fact that sex is abused gives rise to the need for other families to step in to provide the family stability that children need.

Goodman calls traditional reasoning questionable, yet she gets it all backwards.

Against this evolving backdrop, the courts had to reach pretty far to find some explanation for banning gay marriage other than old-fashioned discrimination. Even so—as Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote in her Washington dissent—neither court actually explained why “giving same-sex couples the same right that opposite-sex
couples enjoy [would] injure the state’s interest in procreation and healthy child rearing.” After all, as Chief Judge Judith Kaye of New York wrote in her dissent, “There are enough marriage licenses to go around. ... No one rationally decides to have children because gays and lesbians are excluded from marriage.”

Goodman should ask herself why the state gives special rights to married couples in the first place. The reason for the "special privileges" is to support families! The state knows that the best place to teach a child social virtues that make children good citizens is in the family, so the state helps the family to do just that. To give these privileges to all relationships is to abandon the importance of the family. Liberals like Goodman ask, "How does it hurt your marriage to allow gay couples to get married?" That's the question from the back door.

However, modernists insist on re-defining everything.

“It is the exclusive and permanent commitment of the marriage partners to one another, not the begetting of children, that is the sine qua non of civil marriage,” wrote Chief Justice Margaret Marshall in the Massachusetts decision that extended marital rights to gays and brought conservative wrath down on her head.

Since when? Marriage has always been about the children. But now they want to define sex and marriage as fulfilling relationships without children. Sorry, modernists. That just isn't reasonable.

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