Is Marriage a Social Construct?

Those who have sought to redefine marriage legally have argued that marriage is merely a social construct, i.e., something that can be changed vs. something permanent. My Catholic Answers colleague Jimmy Akin has addressed this issue:

Here is the key point we must make: Homosexual marriage is impossible.

Over and over, pro-family debaters fail to make this point. They allow the question to be discussed of whether society should redefine marriage to include homosexual unions.

This concedes to the other side that society can redefine marriage if it wants to, that it has the ability to do so, and this is a fatal concession. As long as marriage is conceived of as a social construct that society can redefine, the rhetoric of fairness and equal access will ensure that pro-family debaters will lose the day.

The only way to avoid this is to refuse to make the concession, to point out that society does not have the ability to redefine marriage because it is not a social construct. It is something that flows from human nature itself.

Society can’t enable men to marry men or women to marry women any more than we can enable men to turn into ducks or women to turn into geese. Denying people these abilities is not a matter of fairness or equal access. It is not a matter of discrimination or bigotry. We simply do not have the ability.

For more on this issue, please see Jimmy’s related article “‘Gay Marriage’: The Central Issue.”