Why We Cannot Redefine Marriage

Further response to the Good As You readers: I suspect the issue that bothers you the most is why won’t the Church recognize a same sex union as a valid marriage? The answer is that we believe that we do not have the authority or power to redefine marriage.
Some things can be defined and redefined by society. We can decide whether we will drive on the left or the right side of the road. We can decide whether the retirement age will be 63 or 68 or some other number.
Other things have an actual substance that exists apart from our thoughts, desires or feelings about them. We have neither the right nor the actual ability to change the definition of things that have a real existence, apart from our thoughts. If you try to change the definition of something that has a substantial reality to it, you will cause yourself endless problems. We cannot change the value of “pi” from 3.141 to 3, just because we think it would be more convenient.
Marriage is more like “pi” than like traffic rules. Marriage has a substantial reality to it. It is a fact that our species is a gendered species. It is a fact that reproduction requires one male and one female. It is a fact that our offspring are born helpless and have a long period of dependency. It is a fact that attachments between biological parent and child are profound, deep and go beyond the merely rational. Absent this constellation of facts, we would not need a social institution like marriage. But the facts are what they are. And every known society has developed something like marriage.
Your side often tries to dismiss the reproduction argument by observing that not all marriages have children. True, but all children have parents. The social purpose of marriage is to attach children to their mothers and fathers and fathers and mothers to one another. This is the essential purpose of marriage in the sense that without this purpose, we wouldn’t need marriage at all.
Health insurance and social affirmation are incidental side-benefits of marriage. These benefits can be obtained in a variety of different ways. But there is no serious contender for the job of attaching children to parents and parents to one another. Yes, there are exceptional situations, such as adoption. But adoption provides for exceptional situations, without undermining the general rule that biology determines parenthood. You can’t dismiss the reproduction argument, without undermining the social purpose of marriage in the first place.
We believe that it is not possible to remove the basic features of the structure of marriage, including the dual gender requirement, without doing damage to marriage and its ability to perform its social function. The best we can hope for is that the institution of marriage will become a formless blob, with no capacity to provide structure to social life. And it should be said, that some advocates of same sex marriage want exactly that outcome. The Beyond Same Sex Marriage crowd likes the idea of marriage becoming an empty shell that we can fill up with whatever we want. People with these views believe that structure in social life is oppressive, and we would be well rid of it. This is the least bad outcome we can expect from redefining marriage: there will be nothing left of marriage but the name.
But the worst we can expect is that marriage will become corrupted, and will enable people to do things they should not be doing. And before you get your backs up, please note that it won’t just be same sex couples: genderless marriage will induce men and women, straight and gay, to do destructive and anti-social things. Redefining marriage will redefine parenthood, and will do so for everyone. The new definition of marriage will undermine biology as the basis of parenthood, rather than supporting the biological basis of parenthood. Instead of marriage being the vehicle for attaching children to their parents, it will become the vehicle for separating children from their parents. The pressure for triple parenting will become irresistible. Rather than being a social institution that unites sexual activity, spousal love and childbearing, marriage will become the vehicle for separating sex from love from childbearing. Instead of being an institution that rises spontaneously from the society, the new version of marriage will become an artificial creation of the state. There will no longer be natural parents. There will only be legal parents.
Many advocates of same sex marriage seem to find it funny to ridicule the ordinary people who worry about slippery slopes. The plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case, their attorneys and their supporters in the gallery had a field day. But these unsophisticated folk without advanced degrees from exclusive universities have intuited that removing the essential form of marriage will eliminate marriage’s ability to provide structure to social life. They sense that eliminating the form of marriage will unhinge many aspects of social life, with outcomes that are not easily predicted or controlled. Their fears are grounded in something real.
And let me close with a word to Good As You readers: I have no doubt that you are as good as me. That is not the issue. If you look at my writings, you will be hard pressed to find me saying negative things about gays and lesbians. This debate isn’t about your worthiness. It isn’t about you at all. The debate is about marriage.
Let me put it as simply as I can: your side believes that marriage is whatever we say it is. Our side believes that marriage is something, something particular, which exists apart from our desires. We have no more power to change the essential features of marriage than we have to redefine “pi” to be equal to 3, so that math phobic people won’t have to deal with all the pesky decimal places.
You are asking us to do something that is simply not possible.