As many people acknowledge, marriage involves: first, a comprehensive union of spouses; second, a special link to children; and third, norms of permanence, monogamy, and exclusivity.14 All three elements point to the conjugal understanding of marriage.
Marriage is distinguished from every other form of friendship inasmuch as it is comprehensive. It involves a sharing of lives and resources, and a union of minds and wills - hence, among other things, the requirement of consent for forming a marriage. But on the conjugal view, it also includes organic bodily union. This is because the body is a real part of the person, not just his costume, vehicle, or property. Human beings are not properly understood as nonbodily persons - minds, ghosts, consciousnesses - that inhabit and use nonpersonal bodies. After all, if someone ruins your car, he vandalizes your property, but if he amputates your leg, he injures you. Because the body is an inherent part of the human person, there is a difference in kind between vandalism and violation; between destruction of property and mutilation of bodies.
Likewise, because our bodies are truly aspects of us as persons, any union of two people that did not involve organic bodily union would not be comprehensive - it would leave out an important part of each person's being. Because persons are body-mind composites, a bodily union extends the relationship of two friends along an entirely new dimension of their being as persons. If two people want to unite in the comprehensive way proper to marriage, they must (among other things) unite organically - that is, in the bodily dimension of their being.
This necessity of bodily union can be seen most clearly by imagining the alternatives. Suppose that Michael and Michelle build their relationship not on sexual exclusivity, but on tennis exclusivity. They pledge to play tennis with each other, and only with each other, until death do them part. Are they thereby married? No. Substitute for tennis any nonsexual activity at all, and they still aren't married: Sexual exclusivity - exclusivity with respect to a specific kind of bodily union - is required. But what is it about sexual intercourse that makes it uniquely capable of creating bodily union? People's bodies can touch and interact in all sorts of ways, so why does only sexual union make bodies in any significant sense "one flesh"?
Our organs - our heart and stomach, for example - are parts of one body because they are coordinated, along with other parts, for a common biological purpose of the whole: our biological life. It follows that for two individuals to unite organically, and thus bodily, their bodies must be coordinated for some biological purpose of the whole.
That sort of union is impossible in relation to functions such as digestion and circulation, for which the human individual is by nature sufficient. But individual adults are naturally incomplete with respect to one biological function: sexual reproduction. In coitus, but not in other forms of sexual contact, a man and a woman's bodies coordinate by way of their sexual organs for the common biological purpose of reproduction. They perform the first step of the complex reproductive process. Thus, their bodies become, in a strong sense, one - they are biologically united, and do not merely rub together - in coitus (and only in coitus), similarly to the way in which one's heart, lungs, and other organs form a unity: by coordinating for the biological good of the whole. In this case, the whole is made up of the man and woman as a couple, and the biological good of that whole is their reproduction.
Here is another way of looking at it. Union on any plane - bodily, mental, or whatever - involves mutual coordination on that plane, toward a good on that plane. When Einstein and Bohr discussed a physics problem, they coordinated intellectually for an intellectual good, truth. And the intellectual union they enjoyed was real, whether or not its ultimate target (in this case, a theoretical solution) was reached - assuming, as we safely can, that both Einstein and Bohr were honestly seeking truth and not merely pretending while engaging in deception or other acts which would make their apparent intellectual union only an illusion.
By extension, bodily union involves mutual coordination toward a bodily good - which is realized only through coitus. And this union occurs even when conception, the bodily good toward which sexual intercourse as a biological function is oriented, does not occur. In other words, organic bodily unity is achieved when a man and woman coordinate to perform an act of the kind that causes conception. This act is traditionally called the act of generation or the generative act;15 if (and only if) it is a free and loving expression of the spouses' permanent and exclusive commitment, then it is also a marital act.
Because interpersonal unions are valuable in themselves, and not merely as means to other ends, a husband and wife's loving bodily union in coitus and the special kind of relationship to which it is integral are valuable whether or not conception results and even when conception is not sought. But two men or two women cannot achieve organic bodily union since there is no bodily good or function toward which their bodies can coordinate, reproduction being the only candidate.16 This is a clear sense in which their union cannot be marital, if marital means comprehensive and comprehensive means, among other things, bodily.
Most people accept that marriage is also deeply - indeed, in an important sense, uniquely - oriented to having and rearing children. That is, it is the kind of relationship that by its nature is oriented to, and enriched by, the bearing and rearing of children. But how can this be true, and what does it tell us about the structure of marriage?
It is clear that merely committing to rear children together, or even actually doing so, is not enough to make a relationship a marriage - to make it the kind of relationship that is by its nature oriented to bearing and rearing children. If three monks agreed to care for an orphan, or if two elderly brothers began caring for their late sister's son, they would not thereby become spouses. It is also clear that having children is not necessary to being married; newlyweds do not become spouses only when their first child comes along. Anglo-American legal tradition has for centuries regarded coitus, and not the conception or birth of a child, as the event that consummates a marriage.17 Furthermore, this tradition has never denied that childless marriages were true marriages.
How, then, should we understand the special connection between marriage and children? We learn something about a relationship from the way it is sealed or embodied in certain activities. Most generically, ordinary friendships center on a union of minds and wills, by which each person comes to know and seek the other's good; thus, friendships are sealed in conversations and common pursuits. Similarly, scholarly relationships are sealed or embodied in joint inquiry, investigation, discovery, and dissemination; sports communities, in practices and games.
If there is some conceptual connection between children and marriage, therefore, we can expect a correlative connection between children and the way that marriages are sealed. That connection is obvious if the conjugal view of marriage is correct. Marriage is a comprehensive union of two sexually complementary persons who seal (consummate or complete) their relationship by the generative act - by the kind of activity that is by its nature fulfilled by the conception of a child. So marriage itself is oriented to and fulfilled18 by the bearing, rearing, and education of children. The procreative-type act distinctively seals or completes a procreative-type union.
Again, this is not to say that the marriages of infertile couples are not true marriages. Consider this analogy: A baseball team has its characteristic structure largely because of its orientation to winning games; it involves developing and sharing one's athletic skills in the way best suited for honorably winning (among other things, with assiduous practice and good sportsmanship). But such development and sharing are possible and inherently valuable for teammates even when they lose their games.
Just so, marriage has its characteristic structure largely because of its orientation to procreation; it involves developing and sharing one's body and whole self in the way best suited for honorable parenthood - among other things, permanently and exclusively. But such development and sharing, including the bodily union of the generative act, are possible and inherently valuable for spouses even when they do not conceive children.19
Therefore, people who can unite bodily can be spouses without children, just as people who can practice baseball can be teammates without victories on the field. Although marriage is a social practice that has its basic structure by nature whereas baseball is wholly conventional, the analogy highlights a crucial point: Infertile couples and winless baseball teams both meet the basic requirements for participating in the practice (conjugal union; practicing and playing the game) and retain their basic orientation to the fulfillment of that practice (bearing and rearing children; winning games), even if that fulfillment is never reached.
On the other hand, same-sex partnerships, whatever their moral status, cannot be marriages because they lack any essential orientation to children: They cannot be sealed by the generative act. Indeed, in the common law tradition, only coitus (not anal or oral sex even between legally wed spouses) has been recognized as consummating a marriage.20
Given the marital relationship's natural orientation to children, it is not surprising that, according to the best available sociological evidence, children fare best on virtually every indicator of wellbeing when reared by their wedded biological parents. Studies that control for other relevant factors, including poverty and even genetics, suggest that children reared in intact homes fare best on the following indices:21
Consider the conclusions of the left-leaning research institution Child Trends:
[R]esearch clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes. . . . There is thus value for children in promoting strong, stable marriages between biological parents. . . ."[I]t is not simply the presence of two parents, . . . but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support children's development.22
According to another study, "[t]he advantage of marriage appears to exist primarily when the child is the biological offspring of both parents."23 Recent literature reviews conducted by the Brookings Institution, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Institute for American Values corroborate the importance of intact households for children.24
Note, moreover, that for a relationship to be oriented to children in this principled as well as empirically manifested way, sexual orientation as such is not a disqualifier. The union of a husband and wife bears this connection to children even if, say, the husband is also attracted to men. What is necessary in this respect is rather sexual complementarity. Two men, even if they are attracted only to women, cannot exhibit this kind of biological complementarity. In this sense, it is not individuals as such who are singled out - as being less capable of affectionate and responsible parenting, or anything else. Instead, what are systematically favored as bearing a special and valuable link to childrearing are certain arrangements and the acts that complete or embody them - to which, of course, particular individuals are more or less inclined.
Finally, unions that are consummated by the generative act, and that are thus oriented to having and rearing children, can make better sense of the other norms that shape marriage as we have known it.
For if bodily union is essential to marriage,25 we can understand why marriage is incomplete and can be dissolved if not consummated, and why it should be, like the union of organs into one healthy whole, total and lasting for the life of the parts ("till death do us part"26). That is, the comprehensiveness of the union across the dimensions of each spouse's being calls for a temporal comprehensiveness, too: through time (hence permanence) and at each time (hence exclusivity). This is clear also from the fact that the sort of bodily union integral to marriage grounds its special, essential link to procreation,27 in light of which it is unsurprising that the norms of marriage should create conditions suitable for children: stable and harmonious conditions that sociology and common sense agree are undermined by divorce - which deprives children of an intact biological family - and by infidelity, which betrays and divides one's attention and responsibility to spouse and children, often with children from other couplings.
Thus, the inherent orientation of conjugal union to children deepens and extends whatever reasons spouses may have to stay together for life and to remain faithful: in relationships that lack this orientation, it is hard to see why permanence and exclusivity should be, not only desirable whenever not very costly (as stability is in any good human bond), but inherently normative for anyone in the relevant kind of relationship.28
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C. How Would Gay Civil Marriage Affect You...
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