MARRIAGE AND PROCREATION: John Howard

Re: "If sex between men and women did not make babies, marriage would not exist as a universal human institution."

Maybe we could say, "If there were not two sexes, marriage would not exist," and just leave out the part about sex making babies. That would explain why marriage is for everybody, and for their whole lives, and before sex, not just for proven baby-makers during their baby-making years. As soon as people are born, they are one of the two sexes and burdened by their sex's rigid biological role in procreation, whether they will ever procreate or not. So in marriage, we create equality for individuals by joining one person of each sex together, thus canceling out gender inequality by having us all sleep in the same bed. We become fully human in marriage, and equal to all other marriages. Marriage is the atom, the smallest unit, of humanity, individuals are only sub-atomic particles. It is not just romantic but essential to the purpose of marriage that we stop being individuals and become part of a marriage.

And I have to address the topic of procreation rights again:

Jonathan is getting somewhere when he says: "society used marriage as a threat to cope with procreativity ('You'd better not get pregnant or make someone pregnant, because if you do you'll have to marry')." You had to commit to this person for life if you wanted to have sex, because that might make children and you'd be held responsible. You had to get a license to marry. People forget that a license is something that ALLOWS you to do something, it isn't the thing itself. A hunting license isn't a deer, and you don't get a license AFTER you kill a deer. In this case, the thing that a license allows is sex, and therefore, procreation. Fornication laws and adultery laws are part and parcel with marriage laws, and prohibit sex, and therefore procreation, without the public commitment of marriage. Marriage allows it. This is important: all marriages are allowed to procreate. A same-sex marriage would presumably have the same right, and certainly even a civil union with "all the rights of marriage" would have that right.

But should a same-sex couple have the right to procreate? Should a scientist be allowed to combine the eggs of two women or the sperm of two men, to create an offspring of both partners in the marriage? I think this is the important question we should be asking.
http://www.proudparenting.com/page.cfm?Sectionid=65&typeofsite=storydetail&ID=126&storyset=yes
http://lesbianlife.about.com/cs/families/a/Parthenogenesis.htm
http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/apr04/223893.asp

Almost all scientists believe that attempting this sort of thing would be unethical, due to the high risk of birth defects. There is also the issue of it opening the door to germline engineering. By creating the first "impossible in nature" babies, it will make the public more receptive to allowing scientists to add improvements and remove defects. This is all past what Bill McKibben calls the Enough point. We should enact a law that says that no one can attempt to procreate except by combining a man's sperm and a woman's egg. Same-sex couples would not have a right to procreate. And hey, that's what marriage licenses. And that means, if they want to procreate, they will have to do it with someone of the other sex. (It won't ban IVF, and it doesn't require that we restore illegitimacy laws or enforce fornication laws for marriage to grant procreation rights.)

posted by Eve at 6:37 PM | link

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