I know it sounds a little bit strange to modern ears, but sexuality actually has something to do with procreation. In fact it has everything to do with procreation. That such a self-evident truth even has to be stated today shows how far we moderns have drifted from anything resembling common sense, rationality, and the obvious.
It is sort of like having to argue the case that eating has something to do with nourishment. Sure, eating can be fun in itself, but its primary function is to nourish and sustain us. In the same way, sex can be and is fun, but its primary and fundamental function has always been about producing the next generation.
Yet we live in an age which has managed to separate sexuality altogether from procreation. For many people today, it may even come as a surprise to learn that the two might somehow be associated or connected. Thus in a society getting madder by the hour, we have as our duty the restatement of the obvious, and the reaffirmation of basic truths.
Of course finding cases of sexual madness is as easy as it is depressing. Consider the latest example of sexual suicide: A Queensland woman is carrying her homosexual brother’s baby. Here is how the story goes:
“A Queensland woman is due to give birth to a child for her gay brother after impregnating herself with donor sperm from a third party – an act that is illegal here. . . . The man, aged in his mid-twenties, said his older sister, who has two teenage children herself, agreed to carry a child for him earlier this year and became pregnant after being artificially inseminated with another man’s sperm. It is not known if the child, due to be born early next year, will know the identity of its biological mother. It will not have interaction with the biological father.”
In a sure candidate for the understatement of the year, the man said: “I understand that my own situation is a little different to what people would normally hear about”. It’s a little bit different alright. But it is nonetheless becoming far too common. Children are coming into this world in a dizzying array of bizarre combinations and permutations.
Yet the older way which has always been in the best interests of the child is considered to be quaint, oppressive and restrictive. Indeed, the institution of heterosexual marriage is under attack like it has never been before. And with the wholesale obliteration of marriage goes the wholesale destruction of the family.
At such times the job of restating the obvious becomes an essential and vital task. Fortunately Jennifer Roback Morse has risen to the challenge here. In an important article entitled “The Institution Formerly Known as Marriage,” she restates important truths which have fallen on hard times lately.
Why is it that biological parents are so important for children, and why is it that marriage is so important for those parents? She explains: “The essential purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Absent this purpose, we would not need marriage as a distinct social institution. Human beings are not born as rational autonomous actors, they are the immature products of sexual relations between a man and a woman, and they need the assistance of adults to survive. Marriage exists, in all times and places, to solve this social problem. If our offspring were born as adults, ready to live independently, or if we reproduced through some form of asexual process, we would not need anything like marriage.
“Marriage also has a profoundly social purpose. Marriage creates its own small society consisting of mother, father, and children. That small social unit contributes to the larger society by creating a functioning future—the next generation. Everyone benefits from having a next generation that can sustain the society and keep its institutions going. Even when I personally am old, and even if I have not had any children myself, I benefit from the fact that younger people are building cars and houses, providing medical and legal care, starting new businesses, and running old ones. In modern developed countries, the family also saves the state a lot of money by taking care of its own dependent young, rather than foisting that responsibility onto the taxpayers. Thus, the benefits of marriage go far beyond the benefits to the individual members of the family.”
Thus all the weird and wild combinations, included homosexual couples, fall far short. Commenting on a recent decision of the Iowa courts to broaden the definition of marriage, she says: “This is precisely the way in which same-sex couples differ from opposite-sex couples. No child is born from a homosexual union. A child born to one of them has another parent who has been quietly escorted into the lab or the backdoor, to make the conception possible. That person is quickly escorted right back out the door, before he can claim any parental rights, or the child can claim any relational rights. Some of us believe that these two people, the child and the opposite-sex parent, require and deserve some protection. But the Court of Iowa does not think them even worth mentioning.
“The social purpose of marriage has always been to attach mothers and fathers to their children, and to each other. This universal social purpose does not even make it onto the Iowa Court’s short list. The reason should be obvious: opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to that purpose of marriage. If the Court found that attaching children to their parents and parents to one another is a purpose of marriage, they would be unable to sustain their claim that man woman marriage violates the principle of equal protection under the law.
“Society needs marriage because children have rights to care from their parents, rights which they can not defend on their own. Societies create marriage to pro-actively protect the legitimate entitlements of children, and to provide for the future of the society. According to the Supreme Court of Iowa, these provisions for children are no longer the purpose of marriage. We are left to guess as to how this truly essential public function will be performed, now that the Court has surreptitiously removed it from the list of marriage’s jobs.”
We have not only managed to entirely separate sexuality from procreation, but we have also managed to entirely separate the well-being of children from the desires of adults to pursue any sexual path they like. We are so determined to allow adults to run with any sort of sexuality imaginable, that we have simply said we will no longer give a rip about how all this sexual insanity will impact on the most vulnerable and the most directly impacted by all this: the children.
“In sum,” says Roback Morse, “the Court has elevated the private, inessential purposes of marriage to the highest point in the hierarchy of values of marriage. Given this new understanding, neither the longevity of marriage, nor fidelity within marriage can remain as important values. By the time the opponents of conjugal marriage are finished with their redefinitions, marriage will be little more than a five-year renewable-term contract. The Institution Formerly Known as Marriage will be nothing but a couple of individuals, loosely stapled together by the state.
“Advocates of natural marriage, as opposed to genderless marriage, believe that society needs marriage to be a child-centered, gender-based social institution. We have been arguing all along that same-sex ‘marriage’ will be a gender-neutral institution, in which children are only a peripheral concern. When the Supreme Court of Iowa established same-sex ‘marriage’ by judicial decree, they proved our point for us.”
Bit by bit the modern secular state is aiding and abetting the sexual libertines, granting adults the right to do anything sexual under the sun. The biggest losers of course will always be the children.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25574867-952,00.html
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2009.04.24.001.pdart
[1329 words]