Wow I’m really scratching my head here
The best I can guess is that this is some sort of straw man argument
Well if we play with your straw man – left handed people are left handed because it is their nature to be so. Are you saying that left handed people are a separate species?
Misuse of Natural Law to justify discrimination is problematic at best. It usually involves ignoring logic in favor of personal prejudice. Those trying to use natural law for this purpose attempt to make what they refer to as “principled” arguments about why the recognition of same-sex marriages is somehow wrong while at the same time dismissing any pragmatic arguments with out explanation.
In writings about modern natural-law ideas of marriage we find that by “principle” something like this is meant: "Marriage must be between a man and a woman because only they can procreate.” As for infertile heterosexual couples…well they get grand fathered into being allowed to marry for no good reason other than the desire to employ a double standard.
I have read a couple attempts to justify this double standard by claiming that infertile heterosexual couples are excluded from discrimination because they can have sex of a reproductive kind. “Sex of a reproductive kind” is sex that involves a penis and a vagina, even if it can produce no more babies than could a male and a male or a female and a female. The conclusion of the argument is embedded in the “principle” and then offered as if it’s an argument. It doesn’t take a philosophy major to find the flaw there.
In the end those trying to abuse natural law as a justification for discrimination end up asserting that male-female marriage, and only male-female marriage, has an “intrinsic value” that cannot be demonstrated. Its a mystery value. Its value must be grasped in intuitively but cannot be grasped logically. This non-logical intuitive grasping of discrimination is something not everyone can do. “In the end, one either understands that spousal genital intercourse has a special significance as instantiating a basic, non-instrumental value, or something blocks that understanding and one does not perceive correctly.” Gerard V. Bradley
More simply put what those using natural law to justify prejudice are saying is: “Same-sex ‘marriage’ is not marriage because only male-female marriage can be marriage and cannot be defined any other way because we don’t want it defined any other way. Trust me.” They rely on anti-logical mental gymnastics to say that the only way to understand why infertile heterosexual couples are not bound by the same argument we are using to justify anti-gay discrimination is to agree with them and their prejudices.
Sigh
ANOTHER person who has never bothered to actually look up natural law.
Educate yourself on what people who use natural law are
actually talking about, then get back to me.
I’d start with this as a (very) basic overview:
aquinasonline.com/Topics/natlaw.html
In more detail:
newadvent.org/summa/2094.htm#article1
On homosexuality specifically:
newadvent.org/summa/3154.htm#article1
A quote from the last one (I suggest not reading it until you read the first two. I also suggest e-mailing Dr. Edward Feser with questions. I e-mailed him and he got back to me within a day, although I don’t think he’s normally that fast.):
**Article 11. Whether the unnatural vice is a species of lust?
Objection 1. It would seem that the unnatural vice is not a species of lust. For no mention of the vice against nature is made in the enumeration given above (1, Objection 1). Therefore it is not a species of lust.
Objection 2. Further, lust is contrary to virtue; and so it is comprised under vice. But the unnatural vice is comprised not under vice, but under bestiality, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. vii, 5). Therefore the unnatural vice is not a species of lust.
Objection 3. Further, lust regards acts directed to human generation, as stated above (Question 153, Article 2): Whereas the unnatural vice concerns acts from which generation cannot follow. Therefore the unnatural vice is not a species of lust.
On the contrary, It is reckoned together with the other species of lust (2 Corinthians 12:21) where we read: “And have not done penance for the uncleanness, and fornication, and lasciviousness,” where a gloss says: “Lasciviousness, i.e., unnatural lust.”
I answer that, As stated above (A6,9) wherever there occurs a special kind of deformity whereby the venereal act is rendered unbecoming, there is a determinate species of lust. This may occur in two ways: First, through being contrary to right reason, and this is common to all lustful vices; secondly, because, in addition, it is contrary to the natural order of the venereal act as becoming to the human race: and this is called “the unnatural vice.” This may happen in several ways. First, by procuring pollution, without any copulation, for the sake of venereal pleasure: this pertains to the sin of “uncleanness” which some call “effeminacy.” Secondly, by copulation with a thing of undue species, and this is called “bestiality.” Thirdly, by copulation with an undue sex, male with male, or female with female, as the Apostle states (Romans 1:27): and this is called the “vice of sodomy.” Fourthly, by not observing the natural manner of copulation, either as to undue means, or as to other monstrous and bestial manners of copulation. **
Natural law is not simply a “made up thing”. It can be learned through reason and applied practically to the world.
EDIT: BTW, in regards to this quote of yours:
As for infertile heterosexual couples…well they get grand fathered into being allowed to marry for no good reason other than the desire to employ a double standard.
PRmerger and I both agree that infertile heterosexual couples cannot marry.
