Saturday 25 February 2012

The meaning of marriage


I'm never anxious to be one to court controversy, but my dander is up over the proposals to change the legal definition of marriage, to allow it to apply to the union of same-sex couples.

The Civil Partnerships Act, I support: it already gives gay couples rights which are equivalent to the rights of married couples. Marriage, however, has always been a contract between a man and a woman. Unlike a same-sex relationship, it normally involves a sexual liaison that is biologically capable of producing issue. Although same-sex couples are able to adopt and otherwise acquire children, marriage is and should, in my book, remain a unique man-woman relationship, one that's vital for a stable, flourishing society. If you, dear reader, agree, please think about signing - at least - one of the declarations going the rounds, like this one, which seems sensible to me.

2 comments:

Fee said...

As a Quaker I am bemused by the opposition to same sex marriage. While two people of the same sex may not be biologically capable of producing genetic offspring of the couple, this is also true of many marriages, too, which rely on artificial means, adoption or surrogacy to produce offspring.

If two people love each other and wish to marry I can see no harm in it, and I see many positives. Why should anyone oppose it. Loving other people as we love ourselves includes this, to me, that we should offer others the freedoms we enjoy without prejudice, without envy and without conditions.

Martin Davis said...

Like with like pairing is one thing, couples "marrying" is another. You marry a plug with a socket, you don't marry two plugs or two sockets - to put it perhaps rather crudely.