Commentary: Is There a Natural Right to Same-Sex Marriage?

LOS ANGELES, California (MercatorNet) - The people of California, Arizona and Florida recently voted to amend their state constitutions to defend the age-old truth that marriage is the life-long union of a man and a woman with the object of mutual love and the raising of a family. Ever since, those in favor of recognition of same-sex marriage have complained that they have been deprived of their civil rights and denied equality. The recognition of same-sex partnerships with legal and financial benefits akin to marriage is not enough for them. They repeatedly lament the supposed loss of their civil rights and compare themselves to oppressed slaves.

Is there any truth in these claims?

None. In fact proponents of same-sex marriage are usurping the natural and civil right to marriage between a man and a woman. Unfortunately defenders of traditional marriage often have trouble defending the obvious precisely because it is self-evident and defies sound bites. Here I’d like to present a few simple reasons why defending the uniqueness and dignity of traditional marriage is not discriminatory and unfair.

Biblical revelation about God’s creation of man and woman and his plan for marriage is abundant, but arguments for traditional marriage and against same-sex marriage are not exclusively religious. Far from it. The most convincing ones are based on universally recognised natural rights which exist prior to the state and are not created by government fiat or popular consent. Civil rights are the legal recognition of rights which derive from natural rights.

All one needs to do is reflect upon the human experience. It is easy to grasp that each human faculty, including the generative faculty, has its proper functions and ends. We can also discern basic human goods that are necessary for existence and social life, such as procreation, health, safety, freedom, friendship and religion.

Throughout the centuries people have come to recognize different rights -- such as the right to just trials, the right to practice a religion, and the right of universal suffrage. Civil rights are important mainly because they safeguard these basic human rights. Governments protect natural rights, but they do not create them.

Marriage is one of these basic human rights, one which is based on complementary sexual differences between men and women and the good of procreation. Marriage joins a male and a female in a way the involves the total person: soul, body and affections. Usually this union brings forth offspring and the children are raised in a stable environment where the children learn about manhood and womanhood. Children need both a father and a mother because each parent is different and as male and female provide for different needs.

For example, boys need a father to teach them how to respect women, to develop masculine traits and to learn discipline. A Nobel Prize laureate in economics, George Akerlof, has shown how the breakdown of marriage (1) and the absence of a father in the family or some good father figure is related to the sharp rise of delinquency in the US. This alone is nearly conclusive evidence that there is no natural right to same-sex marriage.

What about the mutual affection of homosexuals? Isn’t that enough for marriage?

Not really. Homosexual persons can be united by an emotional union, but never by a biological union. Their sexual activity does not lead to procreation. Heterosexual marriage, on the other hand, involves more than this. “The same sexual act that unites the spouses is also the act that creates new life.”(2) Heterosexual marriage provides offspring for society and a home where children are raised with the love of a father and a mother and the corresponding masculine and feminine role models.

Homosexual sex is essentially different from heterosexual sex within marriage. The conjugal act has an inherent language of self-giving expressed by the man’s giving of his progenitor cells to his wife. Their love is always linked to procreation even though procreation does not always follow the conjugal act. Widespread contraception and co-habitation have separated procreation from sexuality in such a way so that sexual acts between two persons of the same sex are now considered normal by many. But the sexual union of a man and a woman is objectively different.

Are we just quibbling about words here? Partnerships are more or less like marriage, people often argue. Why be so defensive about a few syllables?

But this approach is completely unrealistic. Marriage is more than a word. Words are subject to development, but they mean something. Words are conventional, but they represent fixed realities. No change in language or law can alter reality. Sodomy by any other name is still sodomy. Sexual intercourse between persons of the same-sex is not ...

The latest response on whether there is a natural right to same-sex marriage is from a person named Lucus. This individual asserts that marriage "defined as one man one woman () is actually far from the case." If this were so then there would be no need to argue for or against same-sex marriage as the practice would be so widespread as to make the discussion moot. As it is, the norm or the most predominant "case" is exactly that of one man/one woman marriage.

It is further argued that "history," or presumably anthropology, argues against the present-day widely accepted norm of marriage being defined as only between a man and a woman. Again, if this were so, then the societal definition of one man/one woman marriage would have been shoved off the stage long ago. It has not. Reality is dealing with things as they are, and the reality is that marriage is predominantly practiced and understood to be reserved solely to the one man/one woman relationship.

My Webster's dictionary offers as part of the definition of "anthropology" that it deals with the "teaching about the origin, nature, and destiny of man especially from the perspective of his relation to God." This brings us right back to the original question as to whether there is a "natural right" to same-sex marriage?

"Natural rights" exist in and from the natural law. The natural law proceeds from God, the Creator. My source for this discussion is a book by Father Austin Fagothey, S. J., titled "Right and Reason." It is subtitled "Ethics in theory and practice based on the teachings of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas."

Under his section dealing with marriage Fr. Fagothey quotes Aristotle: "Between man and wife friendship seems to exist by nature; for man is naturally inclined to form couples---even more than to form cities, inasmuch as the household is earlier and more necessary than the city ... human beings live together not only for the sake of reproduction but also for the various purposes of life; from the start the functions are divided, and those of man and woman are different; so that they help each other by throwing their peculiar gifts into the common stock. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure seem to be found in this kind of friendship. But this friendship may be based also on virtue, if the parties are good; for each has its own virtue and they will delight in the fact. And children seem to be a bond of union; for children are a common good to both and what is common holds them together."

Father Fagothey goes on to state that St. Thomas Aquinas expanded on Aristotle, and quotes Aquinas as follows: "That is said to be natural to which nature inclines, although it comes to pass through the intervention of the free will, thus acts of virtue and the virtues themselves are natural; and in this way matrimony is natural, because natural reason inclines thereto in two ways. First, in relation to the principal end of matrimony, namely the good of the offspring. For nature intends not only the begetting of offspring, but also its education and development until it reach the perfect state of man as man, and that is the state of virtue. Hence according to the Philosopher we derive three things from our parents, namely existence, nourishment, and education. Now a child cannot be brought up and instructed unless it have certain and definite parents, and this would not be the case unless there were a tie between the man and a definite woman, and it is in this way that matrimony consists. Secondly, in relation to the secondary end of matrimony, which is the mutual services which married persons render one another in household matters. For just as natural reason dictates that men should live together, since one is not self-sufficient in all things concerning life, for which reason man is described as being naturally inclined to political society, so too among those works that are necessary for human life some are becoming to men, others to women. Wherefore nature inculcated that society of man and woman which consists in matrimony."

That certain aberrations of the married state exist, whether they be polygamy, American tribes, or African tribes, does not negate one man/one woman marriage as the societal norm. When considering these altered states the question must be asked whether they are the exception or the rule. Again, if they were the rule then the arguments in defense of one man/one woman marriage would be moot. The accepted custom would dictate. But man does in fact live in concord with the natural law in his present, predominant acceptance and definition of marriage being only between one man and one woman. Natural law is directed at the achievement of the ultimate good, eternal life with God in heaven. If society makes law or allows law to be made that is inconsistent with the natural law we are not directed to our rightful end, nor satisfied in achieving what is good, or in finding true happiness.

Offering up the obscure, minor anthropological practices of American or African tribes invites comparison to the immature child who says that because other kids do it or are allowed to do something that parental permission must be granted. Responsible parents see through this kind of infantile argument; they know that reason and virtue are necessarily contrary to mere acquiescence to base desires.

There is no law without right, and conversely no right without law. Our country, the United States of America, was founded on natural law. There is no natural right to same-sex marriage. Therefore, it would be manifestly wrong to incorporate a non-existent right to same-sex union into law.

Pete Brady | 1/6/2009

It is difficult to defend traditional marriage if the only argument under consideration is whether or not there is a kind of "equality" at work here between traditional marriage and "same-sex" unions. Merely stating that there is a "right" or that it is a matter of "equality" is not enough. The argument to change thousands of years of mankind's anthropological understanding of marriage as being only between a man and a woman ought to be considerably more rigorous. Modern society really hasn't discovered anything so thoroughly and newly "righteous" here that it should throw out what has been, for how some would have things be.

In the meantime the word "sodomy" ought to be chewed on considerably by those who would consider granting status to any kind of "same-sex" unions. "Sodomy." It sounds bad because it is. Picture it. It has the same ring to it as "masturbation." The same kind of societal disapproval previously went to "fornication" and "adultery." That is before we toned them down to just "having an affair." The results of "affairs" have wreaked untold havoc on today's society.

All efforts to normalize these behaviors are based on the desire to put no restrictions on the maximum extraction of "pleasure" from the human sexual experience. All totally ignore the responsibilities attached to the sexual act. Marriage as has been defined down through the ages as a permanent union between a man and a woman embraces responsibility. All acts outside of this traditional understanding of the sexual union within one man/one woman marriage repudiate responsibility.

To grant society's approval to "same-sex" unions is unequivocally irresponsible. It repudiates our entire anthropological history.

The defense of traditional marriage is simple. It is not an intellectual argument. It is basic. "Same-sex" is sodomy. Say it. "Sodomy." Are you willing to give your approval to that?

Pete Brady | 1/5/2009

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