I believe, as do many others, that the relationship between a man and a woman who have committed not just to each other, but to the raising of any children that arise from their (male-female) union, is a relationship that should be honored as unique - with the title “marriage.”
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the response and reframing what you were saying but I do understand what your getting at.
However, I appreciate the charitable and respectful tone of your honest responses - something more that one or two people here could learn from.
Now, to your points.
I don’t think the heterosexual marriage relationship is necessarily unique, or should be unique, and I’m honestly not bothered about unique titlements.
I do not, in all honesty, think the State certifying a lesbian marriage even remotely impacts on my marriage, nor do I see how it impacts on anyone elses heterosexual marriage - only of they let it.
To be perfectly honest, I’m too busy bringing up my children, running my businesses, growing and deepening my own marriage with my husband, spending time with family and friends, looking after my animals and organic crops and having fun where I can, to be remotely bothered by the lesbian couple on the next farm, their marriage, or anything else about their private lives, other than being good neighbors.
If the State says that “marriage” is just two people who commit to each other, then the State is not recognizing the fullness of your relationship with your loving husband, and is not recognizing the fullness of my relationship with my wife.
I understand and fully respect this is how you see things.
I don’t see it like that at all. I really don’t.
The State has no bearing whatsoever on the quality of my marriage, or how I value it. That is for me and my husband.
But to be honest about it, their relationship lacks a defining characteristic of a marriage, because the same-sex couple cannot exclusively (meaning without the assistance of at least one person of the opposite sex) create life
I do not see the ability to have children as a ‘‘defining’’ characteristic of marriage. My husband just had to shout ‘‘SPERM’’ within earshot of me and I got pregnant. I count myself very fortunate in that regard.
But were I not able to conceive, or were he to be sterile, something we could only ever have found out after we were married as we did not engage in pre-marrital sex (I like to pretend I made the man sweat it out but the reality is I almost drove myself insane
) we would have a different marriage for sure, but just as worthy and deep and valuable. We would have adopted without a doubt. So I don’t see the ability to have children naturally as any kind of special, or defining, characteristic of marriage
Without any support, you conclude that redefining marriage will not devalue your marriage.
I can state as a fact it won’t.
Married same sex couples already exist
My marriage is not affected by them or their existence, other than I am so happy for them to be able to have a marriage on an equal footing, for them, to mine.
I am married.
They too can say, they are married. Not cohabitating, not living in a legal partnership, but married.
It devalues it by denying the fact that you and your husband (as a male/female pair) have the natural potential for creating new life.
We happen to have. But you can’t seriously be suggesting were I to be barren, my marriage would be devalued. Of course not.
This potential for procreation has value that has been recognized for millenia by the institution that indicates societal approval of the union.
I agree with you. And for billions of people traditional marriage will continue to be valued.
That’s not a reason, to me, to exclude others.
The same-sex-inclusive definition of marriage ignores the fact that marriage has traditionally been the fundamental foundation of a society, wherein the next generation is created, and then raised to adulthood.
And I don’t see that changing.
But I hope to this will also be added same sex couples.
By definition, a “same-sex marriage” that includes two men or two women is closed off to this natural potential for new life.
That’s true. I agree.
But I don’t think it matters. We have IVF, which I think Catholics think is gravely wrong, adoption and so on so same sex couples have such enormous potential to offer a great, loving, nurturing home to needy children, or in the case of IVF or sperm donation, one parents own child and shared by their marriage partner, not unlike a young widow remarrying and the new husband helping with the bringing up of her children.
If the state jettisons this procreative aspect from the definition of marriage, everyone’s marriage suffers because the institution itself is devalued into a sort of formal “friends with benefits” relationship completely separate from the important procreative function that marriage plays in society.
I don’t see it that way, and don’t agree.
It has nothing to do with feelings.
It’s a matter of justice, fairness and equality.
Sarah x
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but this does not mean that there were not gigantic groups of Catholic individuals who participated or were complicit in genocide against the native Americans. Yes, we are all human, even Catholics. 
