GENDER DIFFERENCE AND MARRIAGE: Maggie Gallagher replies to Jonathan Rauch

As always Jonathan Rauch sheds a great deal of light in the middle of a great deal of heat.

I don't think the statement "Marriage is only for procreative couples" and "marriage is about procreation" are the same thing.

The second statement is historically true cross-culturally and in our own marriage tradition, both in law and culture. (This latter is demonstrably true; I'm not sure if anyone wants to challenge it and force the demonstration here.)

Gay marriage advocates can say either a) marriage used to be about this, but is no longer; or b) since we allow some couples who don't procreate to marry, we can allow same-sex couples to do so without interfering with marriage's role in managing procreation.

The argument goes in different directions, depending on whether SSM advocates are asserting a or b. Which is it?

BTW, gender difference and procreation are not separate categories, in my mind. The fact that sex between men and women produces babies, on an irregular but fairly frequent basis, is a big huge fact of human existence and human nature, coloring the moral, psychological, emotional and spiritual reality of sexual relationships between men and women. That we often repress this knowledge in pursuit of an androgynous ideal is what makes gay marriage plausible to many folk (see, "We are All Sodomites Now" by Andrew Sullivan in The New Republic.) It doesn't make it true.

posted by Eve at 9:04 PM | link

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