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8/13/03 Defining Marriage Until this century the only real controversy in the history of human culture concerning the institution of marriage was how many men and how many women could belong to the same marriage. What was always constant was that there would be at least one man and at least one woman or there would be no marriage. Similarly, there was never any controversy about sexual practices other than heterosexual intercourse: any other form of sexuality was viewed as deviant. (In the latter half of the twentieth century, it became fashionable to believe that Greco-Roman culture was not only tolerant but even welcoming of certain homosexual practices. Click here for a brief description of the arguments and the reasons why SoothSeeker has concluded that this fashionable belief is more than likely false.) Now the fashion of liberalism and political correctness has declared that any act between consenting adults is as legitimate as any other. SoothSeeker agrees insofar as he sees no point in sending police into people's bedrooms. But they expect more. Tolerance is not enough. They want the society to stand up and in one voice declare homosexual unions to be equal in law with marriage between men and women. Since they have pushed the issue into focus, it falls to the rest of us to define, once and for all, the role homosexuality has in our collective public life and whether or not marriage should have any connection with it. After all, we may have only this moment in history to make the decision one way or the other. The first point to be made is that, upon close analysis, all sexual acts fall into one of two categories: heterosexual intercourse and other acts that stimulate either sexual organ in the absence of its complement. These other acts stimulate either organ by mimicking in one way or another some portion of the sensations of heterosexual intercourse. Furthermore, human sexuality is purely an outgrowth of the biological imperative of reproduction, which, without artificial intervention, is impossible in the absence of heterosexual intercourse. It follows that human sexuality is, by its nature, heterosexual. Homosexual impulses and acts do exist, of course. What I am saying is that they are to heterosexual acts as gum-chewing is to eating: imitations designed to yield some of the pleasures of the simulated activity. Chewing gum yields flavors that imitate food, and allows chewing, which is one of the sensations associated with eating, but it is clearly distinct from eating, and less natural because it fails to achieve the one purpose eating contributes to human survival. In the same way, homosexual acts offer some of the sensations of heterosexual intercourse, while being clearly distinct from it, and failing to achieve the one purpose human sexuality contributes to human survival. The astute reader (or liberal) will point out that not all heterosexual acts are designed to create offspring. Quite so. One of the rarer aspects of human sexuality (by comparison with most other species) is that our biology encourages us to have intercourse just about any time: we are deprived of any outward or clear inward signals to indicate when it is a good time to reproduce. The only outwardly visible secondary sexual characteristics a man has to determine whether or not a woman is ready for sex is the breast, which sends the same signal constantly upon reaching sexual maturity. By contrast, for example, female mandrills hang out a neon sign (if you will) whenever they're fertile, and that is the only time males show any interest. Upon examination, the biological effect of human sexuality is obvious: it leads ultimately to the institution of marriage between a man and one or more women. A male mandrill can ignore a female until she is fertile; as long as he is the only male who has access to her while she is fertile, he can ensure that his offspring are the only ones she will produce. A male human in a primitive society, on the other hand, must ensure that he is the only one who has sex with a woman at any time (because neither of them really knows when she might be fertile), or he risks raising some interloper's children. He must also have intercourse with her fairly frequently if he hopes to have offspring with her at all. This means he must have a much closer relationship to the woman at all times than the mandrill must have to his mates. That relationship is codified in the institution of marriage. The nature of marriage is a complex interplay of the alternately competing and coextensive interests of men and women in reproductive terms. One man who can keep a harem of wives pregnant can leave dozens or even hundreds of children in the next generation. But he risks interlopers slipping children into his family, since the more wives he has the less likely it is he can keep them from other men at all times. The institution of polygyny (one man and many wives) is therefore mostly the province of royalty and the very wealthy, who have the power and influence to enforce their harem's integrity, and at the same time offer enough incentives in safety and security to make the relationship reproductively profitable for the women, who can have just as many children when sharing a man with hundreds of other women as she could with one man. The institution of polyandry (one woman and many men) makes little reproductive sense for men, since the woman can only produce one child (or in extremely rare cases two or three) at a time. Each man has a very limited prospect for leaving numerous offspring in the next generation. Monogamy is the only mutually beneficial, reproductively viable model for marriage in a basically egalitarian society. Almost everyone can have a mate and thus has a good chance to leave a moderate number of offspring in the next generation. Therefore, accepting as the major premise of the argument only this: that human sexuality exists to promote human reproduction, heterosexual monogamy emerges as the natural, egalitarian mode of human sexuality. Every other form steps off the platform to one side or another, and fails to be either natural or egalitarian or both. Homosexual acts are not natural, because they fail to achieve the purpose of sexuality in the first place, as they cannot lead to reproduction. Homosexual unions are not egalitarian, because they bias the pool of available mates, potentially increasing the number who have no reproductive options (that is, every gay couple leaves as many as two women without a potential mate, unless luck leaves us with exactly the same number of united gays as united lesbians). Polygamy (and this includes the serial monogamy that has become almost the norm in American culture) in any form fails to be egalitarian, because it concentrates reproductive opportunities in the hands of a few at the expense of the many. Fortunately, the public institution of marriage in America arrived at the same conclusion, certainly not by coincidence. The only type of marriage permitted under our current laws is the natural, egalitarian model of heterosexual monogamy. Any other form of marriage that could be proposed, including homosexual unions of any kind, will open all relationships that revolve around artificial sexuality (sexuality that is not heterosexual, but strives to simulate the sensations of heterosexual intercourse), and remove the egalitarian constraint of monogamy, because it would dissolve the notion that reproductive opportunities have anything to do with marriage. To put it another way, if two men can marry each other, why can two women and one man not marry? There is nothing more natural or egalitarian about the former match than the latter. Why should gays or lesbians even be concerned about monogamy? There is no natural reason for them to pair up, so there is no natural reason not to get together in groups or to move from partner to partner; there is no need since they cannot produce children in any combination, so even in a primitive state there would never be any lasting controversy. The only incentive for monogamy among gays or lesbians is to emulate the heterosexual model they claim is repressive, to try to gain legitimacy by pretending that all they are doing is practicing a natural variation on the heterosexual theme. There really are no heterosexuals or homosexuals or bisexuals or transsexuals or crossdressers; there are only two genders of people who find differing ways of satisfying the same desires that nature, God, or evolution has implanted in their genes. I don't really care how anyone else chooses to satisfy those desires, provided that no one tries to popularize the preposterous notion that all manifestations of those desires have been created equal. Marriage is the reproductive and productive center of human society, a cooperative bond between a man and a woman that has all the tools to produce and nurture the next generation. No other model is sufficient, and no other model is necessary. The advocates will counter that two men or two women can raise children successfully, too. So can larger groups of mixed genders and sexualities. So can swingers. So can packs of wolves. That is a testament to the resilience of human children; they can adapt to just about anything, and come to view it as normal. That does not make it advisable to throw them to the wolves. If marriage means the sanctioning of any combination of individuals that chooses to live together for whatever reason (does it really have to involve some kind of sexuality? Why?), then it has no real meaning at all; it is diluted out of existence. If it means the sanctioning of the only natural and egalitarian foundation of the human family, then it refers to nothing outside of heterosexual monogamy. Our choice, then is not between marriage for some and marriage for anyone; it is between marriage and no marriage. SoothSeeker takes the side of marriage.
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