I Can't Believe It's Not Marriage!

COMMENTARY BY PATRICK DOWNES

Hawaii Catholic Herald

Equality. It’s what proponents of civil unions say they want. The word has become their mantra, repeated in testimony, in letters to the editor, at public hearings. Lately it has been printed as a simple statement on shiny circular stickers. Just the single word — “equality” — implying that what is being requested is so self-evident, so obvious, so basic.

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So why then the heated debate? Why isn’t it so self evident? How could anyone argue against equality?

Perhaps it’s because advocates of civil unions are using the wrong word. It is not “equality” they mean. It’s “equivalence.”

“Equality” means A is the same as B.

“Equivalence” means A is different from B, but is treated as the same, is granted equality in value, quality and meaning.

Equivalence is sort of like margarine’s relationship to butter. Margarine was created to be butter’s equivalent, but it can never be its equal. It enjoys a vast number of similarities to butter, and many prefer it to butter. But it will never be butter. So even as marketers do their best to push the equality envelope by gushing “I can’t believe it’s not butter!” — it’s not.

Now, according to the Hawaii state House of Representatives’ HB 444, a “civil union” is a same-sex partnership that is the equivalent of marriage. The proposed law, passed by the house last Thursday, grants the full value of traditional marriage to same-sex couples under the label “civil unions.”

According to the house legislation, a civil union is the equivalent of a marriage. It’s a “same-sex” marriage.

So let’s insert “civil union/same-sex marriage” into the context of the original “equality argument” as stated by the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all marriages are created equal.”
If somehow that doesn’t ring right, it is because we know that all marriages (same-sex, opposite sex, of siblings, between children, polygamous) are not created equal.

But how about just traditional marriages and same-sex marriages? Are they equal? No, and for one simple, obvious reason: traditional marriages can produce children; same-sex marriages can’t.

Huh? you say. So what? you say. Modern society has demonstrated that the innate fertility of heterosexuality is not a criterion for marriage. It is, at best, incidental, since many married couples forgo kids, and many children are not the products of marriage. By the same token, the intrinsic sterility of homosexuality can’t be a disqualifier for equality because it’s irrelevant.

Those are good arguments. But they are arguments for equivalence, not equality. They don’t change the facts: that a same-sex relationship can’t have real, biological, complementary, procreative, survival-of-the-species, sperm-seeking-egg sex; that same-sex sex is only imitative of the hetero variety, ultimately sending sperm on a fool’s errand while eggs wait in vain; that same-sex sex is a dead end.

On the other hand, traditional marriages stand by to produce babies, the next generation, new citizens, a future society, the continuity of the human race.

But that’s not true, you say. Single people raise children all the time and so do same-sex couples. Yes, of course, but every one of those children, without exception, is the result of a biological father and a biological mother. And in those cases, it is only because of an adult desire, an adult decision, or an adult circumstance, that one or both of the biological parents has been removed from the child’s life.

If the decision were the child’s, and if the choice were made for the child’s benefit and best advantage, the child would keep both his or her biological father and biological mother.

But because that choice is out of the child’s hands, the child’s best interests depend on the wisdom of adults. Unfortunately, nowadays, adults don’t always see it from the child’s point of view. So often in our society, children have become units of adult fulfillment, implanted when wanted, uprooted when not.

Our democracy allows its people to act that way, and as a result, parenthood has suffered from immaturity, irresponsibility, unfaithfulness and selfish behavior.

Nevertheless, up to now, we have always upheld an ideal — that traditional marriage, which nature has blessed with procreativity, is the model environment we provide as a gift to our children. We have, therefore, encouraged and rewarded traditional marriage with privileges and rights given to no other kind of relationship.

That’s because we believe there is no equal to traditional marriage.

Of course, our society, being free, open and diverse, is made up of an endless variety of sexual and non-sexual relationships, couplings, partnerships and bonds. Among these are same-sex, bi-sex, and transgender pairings. Our state legislature, in its wisdom and good judgment, has recognized the authenticity of some of these associations and given them the reciprocal beneficiary law, through which rights and benefits are granted to special relationships that do not fall under the definition of marriage.

But now we are being asked to accept that traditional marriage has found its equal: homosexual relationships. We are being asked to codify this discovery in law as the will of the people, as a common good.

And as a free democracy, we have every right to take this highly problematic step.

But the only way to rationalize that decision is to jettison the long-held procreative value of traditional marriage, to consciously and deliberately disassociate biological parenting from marriage, and to inform our children that, from now on, their inherent right to two biological parents no longer exists.

That is the only way to give civil unions/same-sex marriage an equal status with traditional marriage.

We’d have to define marriage down.

Now why, in heaven’s name, would we want to do that?