I argue from being

This is the first post in a series on the "Procreation Argument" that I supposedly use to oppose "Marriage Equality". I see the opposition as reducing marriage arguments down to bits or functions, so I need to address where I am coming from before I move on to the arguments themselves.

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I am a woman because God made me a woman, from my soul to my body. My physical reality with all it bits and parts and functions reflects the invisible, which is made visible through the flesh. This means I am different from a man all the way to the roots of who I am. You take away any of my female bits, and I'll still be female.

Procreation is something men do to women or do with women, and marriage changes the dynamics to the latter and ensures the men stick around to look after their families.

Woman was created by God for man, as a helper.  You could think of woman as a gift from God to man.  He saw that man was alone and this was not good, so he a created a separate person out of man, someone who is part of him but different.   Man needs some one different from himself in order to not be alone.

Woman comes with a price. Loving her demands of the man that he put his own desires and wants aside and sacrifice for her and any children that may come from their union. In this way man becomes much more than what he could otherwise be. This type of love forces him to grow.

Of course, not all unions of man and woman are fruitful, for various reasons.  This does not mean that there is not a marriage - all it means is that there were no children.  So IF the couple do nothing to prevent children, then they have a proper marriage.  Therefore, the argument that children are not necessary to a marriage is correct.  However, marriage (ie the stable relationship between a man and a woman) is vital for the optimal raising of children.

Age is also no barrier to God, as there have been a few instances of very important Biblical figures being born to very old parents:  Isacc to Abraham and Sarah, and John the Baptist to Zechariah and Elizabeth, for instance.

Ultimately marriage, when it occurs between a man and a woman, makes them one. Two persons, one flesh. The design by God is male and female, not because of parts or function, but because of who man is and who woman is. Benedict XVI said of the confusion in today's society about this level of understanding about ourselves:

The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper. While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question. He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: “one is not born a woman, one becomes so” (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient). These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term “gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him. Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.

If we don't understand what "being" is, we understand nothing about ourselves, and that's why this conversation with those that think we just have roles to play while alive, rather than exercising the needs of our created reality is almost like talking past each other.  It's probably why someone like Whale Oil thinks I always use the "procreation argument" to oppose redefining marriage, when I do nothing of the sort.  As I said at the beginning, I argue from being.

To be continued ...