DAY 361
CHALLENGE
“Why shouldn’t people of the same sex be allowed to marry one another?”
DEFENSE
It’s not so much a question of what should be allowed as of what is possible. Marriage involves a reality that can only exist between a man and a woman.
Marriage is a union of a man and a woman that is oriented toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring (CCC 1601). No other kind of union is a marriage.
Since before recorded history, men and women have united to care for each other and to bring up children. That happens in every culture, no matter where in the world. In fact, a culture would die without those unions of men and women. Marriage is thus a human universal, an institution that is built into human nature.
People of the same sex cannot marry one another because any union between them would not have the reality that marriage possesses.
This is particularly obvious when it comes to procreation. Two men or two women cannot procreate. For new children to be brought into the world, biology requires the union of a man and a woman.
But procreation is not the only issue. Men and women are different in ways that go beyond reproduction. Both physically and psychologically, they complement and complete one another in a manner that two people of the same sex do not.
These differences also play an important role in raising children. By setting examples of true fatherhood and motherhood, a husband and wife provide the kind of environment that helps children grow and develop properly.
Even apart from procreation and raising children—as in the case of marriages that do not result in children due to infertility—the physical and psychological differences between men and women enable them to unite and thrive in a way two people of the same sex cannot.
In all these cases, and especially in the case of procreation, it is clear from nature that men and women are designed to be united with each other in a way two men or two women are not. For this reason, same-sex unions do not possess the reality of marriage, and it is simply playing games with words to call them marriages when they lack that reality.