In the beginning, God created them male and female, male and female he created them. So speaks the book of Genesis, the oldest book of the Bible (Gen 1:27). Men and women are different. Physically, emotionally, psychologically… they are different!

Marriage, since the genesis of man, has been the institutional building block of society. The word carries power. Webster defines it as “the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family.” A man, a male, and a woman, a female, are joined. The two are united through their wills, and their contract is consummated through sexual intercourse.

The dual purpose of marriage is unitive and procreative. It provides a structure for raising children. The state cannot survive without the reproduction of the people. More importantly, the state will not be healthy without healthy citizens. And so, the family provides a most essential function for the state. A strong mother and a strong father equal a strong child, who will one day be a strong citizen. It is the recipe for good citizens

The family is a unit. The mother, father, and child are inseparable. You take away one and the rest cease to exist. Think about this for a moment. It seems superficial but it is profound. A woman becomes a mom and a man becomes a dad when the child is conceived through the sexual act. They were transformed into dad and mom while co-creating a new life. The two became one flesh in sexual union and from that one flesh came forth three, each uniquely related to the others. And these three make one unit. This images the life of the Trinity. Mother, father, and child, three persons yet one family unit, a living reminder of God and a foundational unit of the state.

Two women can't make a child; two men can't make a child. Biologically, the female needs the male to reproduce. The child's conception should link male and female together like superglue, forever changing them. They become responsible for each other and the baby; and they become a new and unique productive unit in the state. The parents now exercise indispensable roles in the new family. Beyond the obvious biological differences, they influence the child in different ways. The woman/mother provides the potency of her femininity, while the man/father provides the potency of his masculinity. Neither is more important, they are both vital and dynamically complementary in influencing the development of the child.

The family recipe of a mother, father, and child is as old as civilization. It has withstood the test of time. Some traditions must be changed when they fail or become antiquated. Marriage has done neither. The institution has always strengthened the state through its product, namely citizens, and it continues to strengthen it today.

Citizens obsessed with promoting so-called 'rights' are posing a serious threat to this institution. Through their efforts to have state support for same-sex relationships, they have hijacked the potent word 'marriage,' and thus blurred the difference between heterosexual relationships and gay relationships. Male and female union is essentially different from male and male or female and female. In fact, all three are different but at least the latter two are akin in that they are same-sex unions.

The physical union of the male and female is ordered. The two sexes complement one another. The male and male do not complement one another. Physically, they do not fit, except in a disordered and backwards way. The female and female also do not fit, not even in a disordered way.

The physical reality of the union in marriage is real. The male and the female really unite in a way that is impossible for members of the same sex. This sexual union is existential. You would not be reading this if it weren't for such a union. Do not reduce it to mere physical pleasure and fleeting fun. Gay marriages cannot include this procreative function. That is absolutely essential to realize.

In A Clash of Orthodoxies, Princeton Professor Robert P. George, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, speaks of the fallacy of gay marriage: “What's at the heart of this fallacy? It's the idea that the real person isn't the physical biological reality of you or me, the real person is the consciousness, which merely resides in a suit of flesh. The person isn't the flesh but the consciousness that resides in the flesh.” The fallacy is that people refuse to recognize the substance of the person. They need to acknowledge man's physical reality. The person is not only a mind or only a body; the person is a unity of body and mind.

The trouble is that the word “love” is being abused and overused. Gay marriage activists say that any two same-sex adults should have rights to marriage because their shared “love” is equal to any heterosexual “love.” In essence, the union in marriage has been equated to love shared, and the whole physical reality of this love being shared has been jettisoned. Along with that, the whole structural purpose of marriage, which is the founding and maintaining of a family, has been jettisoned. What really needs to be jettisoned though is the word “love” from the legislative arena in regards to marriage. The word's meaning is a mystery. There are many definitions. Most likely, the real definition is in proximity to all the definitions combined and yet even more profound.

The fact is that marriage, in relation to the State, serves as an ordering unit through which healthy citizens are bred. “Love” really is not the concern of the State. Whether Gay marriage can possess real love is marginal. The crux of the issue is whether or not it serves the State. Gay marriage does not because it cannot. It cannot be procreative. It cannot breed good citizens. It cannot provide a structured family unit. In truth, we cannot even call it “gay marriage.” That would be like saying gay heterosexual union. “Gay marriage” is nonsense.


by Peter Reynolds

[Peter Reynolds is a senior at Georgetown University, majoring in philosophy and government. Contact at: prr6 (at) georgetown.edu]