I recently wrote an article for a Christian campus ministry’s website called “Do more than vote” in which I discuss abortion and gay marriage. I said that one of the main purposes of marriage is to have children.
A women emailed me back saying that she respectfully disagrees with my statement because infertile people can get married, too. I responded that that’s true, a marriage of two infertile people (a man and a women) is valid because not every instance of sex results in children. Thanks Catholic Forums!
But now I need an argument (probably something biblical since she is a Christian) for why one of marriage’s purposes is to produce children. I cited the Catechism but I’m not sure whether or not she agrees with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Please help!
Oy vey. Canon law recognizes this as so obvious that it is assumed that everyone past the age of puberty is presumed to know it until shown otherwise! Can she find a single instance of marriage in Scriptures in which failure to have children is not considered problematic? Why is there not a single instance of a childless couple in Scriptures in which both parties were fine with that? Because people once knew that the purpose of marriage was children, not mutual gratification!
Can. 1096 §1. For matrimonial consent to exist, the contracting parties must be at least not ignorant that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.
§2. This ignorance is not presumed after puberty.
From a purely secular standpoint (because, after all, our government is secular):
Business licenses are given out to regulate businesses, whose purpose is to engage in commerce so as to make money. That does not mean that every business engaging in commerce is going to make money. It does mean that the state has an interest in encouraging and regulating those enterprises that do exist for the purpose of employing citizens, producing goods and services, and making money. Society needs businesses to function, and so enterprises that have what the state deems to be the essential qualities needed to engage in commerce can get licenses.
If the state’s interest in regulating and licensing marriage is not children, then pray tell what is there about two (or more) adults living together that is any business of the states? That they take care of each other? Fine! Then give adults licenses for mutual care. But if the enterprises is definitely not going to be about producing children because the very nature of the relationship forbids it, then what is wrong with a) regulating that in recognition that the enterprises is fundamentally different from relationships of the type that are at least theoretically fecund and b) recognizing that whether or not two people of the same sex are having sex could not be more beside the point because it is never ever going to be fecund!
I would point out this societally dangerous trend, too: The pretending of marriage by homosexual couples is prompting them to pretend that their relationship is, in fact, capable of producing children. They do this by resorting to sperm donors and surrogate mothers. In so doing, they are seeing to it that children are conceived by a mother and father who
agreed in advance that one biological parent would be excluded from that role for their own child. They are, in fact, conspiring to ensure that the child will be denied an upbringing with both parents…the home is broken before it is formed. Yet the pretense goes so far that in some states birth certificates falsely put a person on a child’s birth certificate whom everyone knows cannot possibly be a biological parent. because the child’s other parent wants to pretend to be in a fecund partnership. These are health department records!
Lies and more lies, and people renting out their bodies so that others can pretend to be something they are not and deny their own children contact with one of their parents in order to get there. Rent your body for pleasure, and that’s wrong. Rent your body in order to give away your child to someone else to raise, and that’s no one’s business but yours. (And please do not tell me that giving it all away for free is on some other different ethical plane, in either case.) That is where this is all going!
