An Open Letter on the Importance of Sexual Difference
On the day after Christmas, the Tampa Tribune published an article about the possibility of Florida becoming the twenty-eighth state to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex “marriage.” The following is an open letter to Jack Nelson Steward who posted a response to the article online.
Dear Jack,
I’m writing in response to your impassioned post about the proposed ban on same-sex “marriage” in Florida. You asked, “What real interest does the State have in the gender of two people joined in marriage? As far as the State is concerned the civil requirements, rights and liabilities of marriage are the same no matter what the sex of the partners.”
Jack, I’d ask you to reflect: What is it that a man and a woman can do that two men or two women cannot do? Is it significant? Important? Meaningful? Does the State have an interest in it? If so, is that interest significant? Important? Meaningful?
Forgive me if what follows sounds flippant, but imagine, if you will, that an alien being from a sex-less galaxy landed on earth to study the human being. Coming from a sex-less world, the male-female difference would likely be the first thing to catch its attention. “What is this difference for?” it would ask. Inquiring minds want to know.
Upon study, this alien would readily observe that each member of the human species is amazingly self-sufficient in his or her functions as an organism. The heart, the lungs, the kidney, the pancreas, the stomach, the bladder, the rectum, etc. all work together to carry out their functions. And both sexes have all the same organs ... except ... except what we fittingly call the sexual organs.
There is one function, this alien has discovered – and a critical function indeed – that simply cannot be carried out without cooperation from another member of the species. And that other member of the species must be of the opposite sex (i.e., must have different sexual organs) or said function doesn’t function. This is the light that illuminates for the alien the most basic purpose of the genitalia. The sexual organs of male and female actually work together in a stunning, harmonious inter-dependency to generate (hence the term “genitalia”) new members of the species.
Furthermore, since the baby born to them cannot survive on its own, the alien rightly realizes that the man and the woman who co-operated to bring this life into existence, if they are to be responsible, must commit themselves to rearing their child. Precisely this commitment (the commitment to responsible genital intercourse as the foundation of future generations) is called marriage. The State has a vested interest in maintaining this relationship (marriage) precisely because it has a vested interest in its own survival.
Jack, you assert that marriage “works the same no matter who the people are.” Whether its “Adam and Eve, or Adam and Steve, it’s the same profound lifelong journey.” I’m sorry, Jack, this is simply not the case. What a man and a woman can do is stupendously, wondrously different than what two men or two women can do. It is not “the same.” And its not “the same” precisely because of the sexual difference.
As you see it, “Any two people who are sufficiently committed to each other ... should be encouraged to [marry].” Does this hold for a father and his daughter? A mother and her son? A brother and sister? Why can’t members of the same family marry? For the same reason members of the same sex can’t marry: marriage is the relationship that orders genital intercourse to the good of the spouses, the good of their offspring, and, as a result, the good of the State.
Members of the same family should never engage in genital intercourse (incest) and members of the same sex are simply unable to engage in genital intercourse. Whatever behavior they might engage in, a man cannot unite his genitals with another man’s genitals, nor can a woman unite hers with another woman’s. It’s simply impossible.
Hence, it’s not that members of the same sex could marry but Church and State “ban” it. Rather, it’s that it’s impossible for members of the same sex to marry and the Church and State recognize that fact – or at least should recognize it. |
