Is Marriage Discriminatory?

The national public debate on same-sex marriage has certainly now begun in earnest following the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in November, which stated, “The right to marry means little if it does not include the right to marry the person of one's choice” — even if that person is someone of the same sex.

This decision is similar to one made by an appellate court in Canada in June. Belgium and the Netherlands have recognized same-sex marriage for a couple of years. Then there are the “civil unions” legally recognized in places such as California and Vermont. Homosexual unions certainly now inescapably confront us as a society.

It is simply astounding how many people today apparently do not understand that a marriage is necessarily a relationship between a man and a woman — between persons, that is, belonging to different, though complementary, sexes.

The origin of human marriage arose, necessarily, out of the way men and women, respectively, are made: “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Moreover, the reason God created males and females is also given right there in the book of Genesis; it is implicit in the commandment that God immediately gave to the first man and woman: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth …” (Genesis 1:28).

The differentiation between the two sexes, in God's plan for the human race, thus came about for the express purpose of perpetuating the species (“filling the earth”). The marriage of a man and a woman, therefore, necessarily looks toward their possible children. It is precisely for this purpose, the book of Genesis informs us further, “that a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The one-flesh union of man and wife involves a unique way of giving themselves to each other based on their complementary sexuality. By its very nature, however, this form of self-giving also has the potential of creating new life.

Thus, the union of the two sexes in marriage naturally brings about the human institution that is found among all peoples at all times and places, since the beginning of the human race, namely, the family. Made up of man, wife and the children they bring into the world, the family is the primary and original way human beings come to live together and are also best able to flourish. The family is prior both to society and the state.

Because infants and young children are dependent for so long after birth, they require stable and committed parents for their nurture, upbringing and education. Because of the well-being of the children, therefore — but also for the well-being of the man and wife themselves — the marriage that founds a family is intended to be a permanent union: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6, Mark 10:9).

We need to remind ourselves of these simple truths at a time when so many people seem to have abandoned the very idea of what marriage is and necessarily has to be. The Massachusetts court could not “identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying marriage to same-sex couples.” But the reason, of course, is that homosexual unions are not marriages! Up until recently, most of us probably thought that everybody understood that. It seemed to be as obvious as it was natural that marriage had to be a relationship between a man and a woman.

Now, however, the very idea of what is “natural” seems to have unaccountably disappeared from the minds of many. As a result, the Massachusetts Supreme Court finds itself arbitrarily redefining marriage by saying: “We construe civil marriage to mean the voluntary union of two persons as spouses to the exclusion of all others.”

It obviously takes it for granted here that there is nothing fixed or established that marriage simply is. Instead, marriage is supposedly what the court “construes” it to be. But no court can just arbitrarily redefine marriage as something other than it is. If marriage is something that can be redefined as a relationship between two homosexuals, then it can be redefined in other ways as well. On what logical grounds, for example, can “all others” be excluded from a “voluntary union” that is itself nothing more than a willed personal relationship? Why cannot individuals will to enter into other personal relationships and call them marriages?

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret — You may throw nature out with a pitchfork, but she will keep coming back.

Thus, the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, as Archbishop Sean O'Malley of Boston remarked, “defies reason” and represents a rejection of “an understanding of marriage tested over thousands of years and accepted nearly everywhere as the key to a stable society.”

Regardless of what people today might have come to believe about them, therefore, homosexual unions are disordered and unnatural. They go counter to the natures of men and women as God created them. Sexual acts between persons of the same sex are counterfeits of the one-flesh union on which true marriage is based. Homosexual couples are incapable of achieving this one-flesh union.

Moreover, homosexual acts are necessarily sterile. They cannot result in the procreation of children. Thus they cannot be the basis of any true family but, again, can only be a pathetic counterfeit of one.

For all these reasons, homosexual unions are not only unnatural, but they are also immoral. This is the question almost nobody wants to talk about today. Ever since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, our society has determinedly dropped any idea of moral disapproval of anyone's freely chosen sexual behavior.

It is not that morality or moral disapproval themselves have been dropped, because smokers, those who harm the environment or “discriminate,” continue to incur severe moral disapproval. It is only on matters related to sexual behavior that moral disapproval is now held to be “judgmental” and therefore out of bounds.

That is one of the reasons why same-sex couples are suddenly viewed so widely with equanimity, as if their conduct were the most natural thing in the world and just another lifestyle choice. Hardly anybody is prepared to condemn them when almost no other type of sexual behavior outside of marriage is any longer condemned either. And that is surely why judges in Massachusetts and Canada have been able — so far! — to get away with ruling that homosexual couples ought to be able to “marry.” For society to acquiesce in such rulings, however, will eventually mean the end of marriage.

How is it all going to end? Can our society go on defying nature and morality indefinitely?

The ancient Roman poet Horace wrote, “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret” (“You may throw nature out with a pitchfork, but she will keep coming back”). We certainly have to hope he was right about that. But unless and until nature does reassert herself, we surely have to oppose so-called same-sex marriage in every way possible.

Kenneth D. Whitehead, the author of One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: The Early Church Was the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press), writes frequently on Church affairs from Falls Church, Virginia.