SSM debate: the sterility objection

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It’s amazing how people who would normally subscribe to science suddenly cover their eyes when it comes to the scientific connection between sexual intercourse and procreation!

To say that sex is ordered toward procreation is not really a Catholic thing; it’s common sense. And again, this does not mean that sex must result in pregnancy. The key is that the act itself is connected with the possibility of pregnancy.

How is that mental gymnastics? Is it mental gymnastics to say that the act of eating is biologically connected with nutrition, yet need not always result in weight gain?
 
surritter said:
So I again pose to you: why is a government even in the business of handing out certificates to two people? What is it about two people in love that would even be of interest to a government? It’s that these two people form the basis or “cell” from which new citizens will emerge.
I never said that married couples are under an obligation to rear children. But the nature of their relationship is “ordered” toward procreation. The descriptions you provide about marriage have no basic reason for limiting marriage to just two people.
This is not about religious vs. civil marriage. It’s about the definition of marriage, and need not involve religion, as you seem to think. It’s based on biology.
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As I said, the government doesn’t care if you’re in love. There is no “are you in love” check box on the marriage certificate.

There are certain rights which would not scale well to more than 2 people, for example inheritance and making spousal medical decisions.

Catholic marriage does indeed care whether or not marriage is ordered towards procreation, but not civil marriage. There are no laws against contraception. The government doesn’t care if people use birth control or voluntarily sterilize themselves, for example.

If we are looking for one universal definition of marriage, I do not believe that is possible. There are many different religious conceptions of marriage, and I believe there are several which are fundamentally incompatible.
 
CopticChristian said:
What responsibilities of marriage do the disordered homosexuals want to take on?
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I don’t know about disordered homosexuals, but normal, well ordered homosexuals want to take on all the responsibilities of civil marriage (and likely some additional responsibilities depending on their religion.)
 
spencelo said:
In this thread, I would like to focus on one argument in the SSM debate, which I’ll call the “sterility objection” (SO). I’m going to state the objection as clearly as I can, with the hope that someone will tell me where exactly it goes wrong.

The SO is a response to the argument that SSM shouldn’t be legal because same-sex couples can’t procreate; it argues that if we accept this argument, then we could run a parallel argument against many opposite-sex marriages, which would be absurd. Here’s my construction of the objection:

(1) If same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry because they can’t procreate, and there are no relevant differences between same-sex couples and permanently sterile opposite-sex couples, then permanently sterile opposite-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry for the exact same reason: because they can’t procreate.
(2) There are no relevant differences between same-sex couples and permanently sterile opposite-sex couples.
(3) Therefore, if same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry because they can’t procreate, then permanently sterile opposite-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to marry for the exact same reason: because they can’t procreate. (from 2, 1)

The only way to deny conclusion (3) is to deny one of the premises, because as a matter of logic, the above argument is valid. No one could rationally, in my view, deny (1) because it is simply a statement of the consistency principle: that we should apply reasons consistently, not arbitrarily.

Thus the main problem with SO–if there is a problem–is with premise (2). Opponents who deny the conclusion must deny (2), and affirm the following: that there are relevant differences between same-sex couples and permanently sterile opposite-sex couples. What are those relevant differences?
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Spence…

The infantile, ignorant argument of sterility needs to be based in reality…

Lets compare the homosexual to the Elderly, Impotent, Postmenopausal, Sterile because if you ban homosexuals from marryint then you ban these people to. Examine your uneducated notion.

**Elderly. ** It has been reported that woman as old as 66 and 80 have been impregnated and the possibility exists for the elderly to be procreative. Therefore I don’t care how long you wait a homosexual union will never procreate so the potential is possible with the elderly and the elderly should and do marry.

**Sterility **is defined medically as
Primary, a pregnancy has never occurred
Secondary, involves one or both partners who have conceived previously, but are not unable to do so because of a possible physical or medical condition impairing fertility. A woman who keeps having miscarriages is also considered infertile.

No homosexual union would qualify as medically sterile since there never has and never will be a pregnancy in a monogamous homosexual union and the possibility of a previous pregnancy or miscarriage does not exist. Therefore homosexual unions cannot be equated to the medically sterile. Homosexual unions are sterile by choice.

There are causes of sterility and infertility and yet even if a homosexual partner was sterile and rendered fertile within the homosexual union would not be procreative.

Elderly. It has been reported that woman as old as 66 and 80 have been impregnated and the possibility exists for the elderly to be procreative.

Sterility is defined medically as
Primary, a pregnancy has never occurred
Secondary, involves one or both partners who have conceived previously, but are not unable to do so because of a possible physical or medical condition impairing fertility. A woman who keeps having miscarriages is also considered infertile.

There are causes of sterility and infertility and yet even if a homosexual partner was sterile and rendered fertile within the homosexual union would not be procreative. Study the medical literature, I have, let me know when you find the medical literature on “Sterile by Choice”…🍿

Impotence

Causes of Impotence. Homosexuals may suffer from impotence however even if corrected would remain impotent for procreative purposes by choice within a homosexual union. Homosexuals suffer from similar diseases that cause impotence but so what.

• Atherosclerosis (buildup of plaque on the walls of arteries; atherosclerosis is a common cause of cardiovascular disease)
• Depression or anxiety
• Diabetes
• Kidney disease
• Medication side effects
• Multiple sclerosis (disease that affects the brain and spinal cord causing weakness, coordination, balance difficulties, and other problems)
• Obesity
• Penile or testicular trauma or surgery of the bladder or prostate
• Peripheral neuropathy (disorder that causes dysfunction of nerves that lie outside your brain and spinal cord)
• Spinal cord injury or tumor
What are the risk factors for impotence?
Many factors may increase your risk of developing impotence. Not all people with risk factors will develop impotence.

Risk factors for impotence include:
• Alcohol abuse
• Cigarette smoking
• Overweight or obesity

Reducing your risk of impotence

You can play an active role in lowering your risk of impotence by:
• Controlling your blood pressure if you have high blood pressure
• Controlling your blood sugar if you have diabetes
• Decreasing or eliminating alcohol use
• Eating a healthy diet
• Increasing physical activity
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Quitting smoking

Homosexuals could reduce their risk factor for impotence and address factors related to impotence but for what reason and what does that have to do with marriage of homosexuals and heterosexual couples.

Here is the real reason…If we can remove this notion from people’s minds that sex and procreation are not part of the equation because of the relationship to other non-sequitors then…

The rationale would be that marriage serves functions that are as important as,** if not more important than, procreation,** including interpersonal commitment, religious or moral expression, sexual satisfaction, and the **legal entitlements **associated with spouse hood.:clapping::crying:

Procreation gets relegated to the back burner in favor of legal entitlements…boo hoo…we want what we want when we want it and we want it now…NO!:nope:
 
surritter said:
So I again pose to you: why is a government even in the business of handing out certificates to two people?
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The government is essentially simply providing a contract that two people can fill out. By agreeing to the contract, the government gives them certain rights, and they take on certain responsibilities. Why does the government do this? Because otherwise couples would have to seek out each right individually, which would be inconvenient for everyone.
 
“SSM”? Frankly, “same-sex marriage” as a terminological assemblage is a little presumptive and misleading, especially in a debate that’s precisely over the potential marital merits of such a questionable combination. Let’s go ahead and finally start labeling this subject properly, by what it essentially is, namely, state-sanctioned sodomy*. As civil marriage is an institution that’s effectively endorsed by the government out of some apparent society-wide appeal, it is not a basic human right, but a privilege; it’s a matter of couples achieving positive, legally-supported benefits for maintaining a household in a fashion for which there’s deemed to be compelling public interest due to some reliably-productive social functioning. (I’m kind of hoping this term will eventually catch on and one day be considered perfectly normal, perhaps even becoming an officially-acceptable choice after its culturally-imposed debut as a hot, new politically-manufactured controversy. In other words, maybe my terminology will mimic The Gay Movement.)

*Adopting apt alliteration arguably adds up to an advantage.
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
I don’t know about disordered homosexuals, but normal, well ordered homosexuals want to take on all the responsibilities of civil marriage (and likely some additional responsibilities depending on their religion.)
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True, take it to the Church concerning your notion of ordered homosexuals along with your impious, irreligious, skeptical, unbelieving notions:D
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
The government is essentially simply providing a contract that two people can fill out. By agreeing to the contract, the government gives them certain rights, and they take on certain responsibilities. Why does the government do this? Because otherwise couples would have to seek out each right individually, which would be inconvenient for everyone.
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Then there is no logical reason why 4 people cannot get married, right?
 
What “rights” must be given by marriage that cannot be given by other legal vehicles? Many SMM-proponents trot out the right of inheritance or being the beneficiary of insurance and other benefits. But there are many other ways within civil law to do that.

I keep going back to science because that pre-dates the rules of civil law. In the case of marriage, science drove the need for marriage. Otherwise, you’re just making up some arbitrary rights that could be drawn up in any number of other papers.

Hmmm… what is it that a male and female can do that no other combination of people is scientifically capable of?

If you answer that question honestly, you’ll see why SSM is not possible. It’s not that I’m against SSM. I’m pointing out that it’s not even a possibility based on the definition of marriage.
 
I came across this link while perusing another thread. The blogger does a good job of explaining the natural meaning of the conjugal act.

The teleology of the act itself is inherently conjugal and procreative. That is true whether the husband and wife are fertile or sterile, whether conception takes place or not. The act itself is ordered to procreation. To have sex with one’s wife is to say with your body “I choose you to be the mother of my children.” It also says “I love you.” and “I will be faithful to you.” But those statements flow from the essential procreative meaning of the act itself. The conjugal act is ordered to procreation regardless of whether the couple are young and fertile, or old and infertile. The conjugal act (and no other) is ordered to procreation. Here is an excerpt from the blog:

Sexual intercourse has a natural teleology; it is ordered to procreation. This natural end provides a context which itself assigns a meaning to the sexual act. This meaning is “natural” in the sense that it “presents itself” to the mind of a sufficiently intelligent participant without requiring any decision on his or her part. If I make love to a woman, it means “I choose you to be the mother of my children.” This, and only this, is directly and naturally signified by intercourse.
. . . .
Sex has one meaning, and that is procreation which implies unity. Without its procreative telos, sex could only signify love by convention, and conventional signification is a much weaker thing than natural signification. In any case, the natural context is inescapable. If one wickedly frustrates the sexual act through contraception or sodomy, one does not simply take the natural meaning of sex “off the table”; one actively rejects it. Unnatural sex acts themselves carry a natural meaning, namely the rejection of what would be positively affirmed by natural sex. “I reject you as the mother of my children.” To add a conventional meaning of “I love you”, but the action itself speaks against it.
 
fix said:
What I offer is common sense. You simply deny reality because you do not want to hear what is true.
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I doubt that truth comes from the manipulation of language to make it mean what you like, while ignoring its obvious meaning. But then, your truth may be relative.
 
Ah, leave the stupid troll alone.

Iron Donkey laid it out very well about 5 pages back. Gays are under no illusion that their fornication is able to produce children. Men and women who contracept are know they’re actively trying to prevent the conception of children. Men and women who get a vasectomy or a ligation are under no illusion that they didn’t do it because they wanted to actively prevent children. Men and women who NFP to purposefully avoid children know why they use NFP.

Spence is just either too stupid, too arrogant, or too myopic to understand that people have intentions behind their actions, and that the intentions, not the results, are the only things we can control.

He’s too wrapped up in the mechanics of it all to understand that there’s motivation behind it all. That people THINK about what they’re doing when they contracept, or when they have sex. After all, he reduces the MAN and the WOMAN - two human beings capable of thinking, and reasoning, and giving reasons for why they do things - to their reproductive organs, which don’t think or reason by themselves. He takes only a tiny part of the person into consideration and throws the rest away in his arguments.

But you can’t DO THAT. When people do things, they do them for a reason.

Now, when a married man and married woman come together in the coital act, and they both have their tubes cut/tied, is their act contraceptive?

Let us look at two “extremes”, if you will.

One couple, even with their tubal ligation and vasectomy, still has the woman taking a pill and the man wearing a condom, because they realise that there is the chance - the slight chance - that a TL or V could fail, and they want actively to prevent any chance of conceiving, even if it means his enjoyment is diminished, or her immune system is more vulnerable.

Clearly their intention is to prevent a child from being conceived, as we can see by their over-caution in using a condom and a pill, even with a TL and V.

Another couple, on the other hand, had a TL and V earlier in their marriage. But then, by ways unknown to us, they came to become faithful, obedient Catholics. (Yes, Spence. People do do it.) In the process they learned Vs and TLs are morally evil. And they were sorry that they had gotten their tubes snipped/tied. However they could not afford to reverse their procedures. So they said to each other, “We know we were wrong to have ourselves mutilated like this. While we may not want children ever, who are we to say that we shouldn’t be parents? How arrogant of us! Well, it may be unlikely we’ll ever conceive now. But let’s make love, and if it be God’s will, have a child.”

So they couched often, remembering often what they had said to each other, always keeping it in mind, confessing when they had sex without intending to have children, asking for forgiveness from each other and from God.

Clearly, even though their capacity is severely diminished by their situation, they still wish to fulfill God’s will. They once had not wished to, and had mutilated themselves. But their hearts are untied and uncut, even if it is unlikely their reproductive tracts will be.

And for kicks, let’s consider a third set: two women. They started out as sapphists - I refuse to call them by the proper name of the people of Lesbos, Greece, God help them - and fornicated often. Naturally, of course, their burning lust could never, ever produce children. And they were well aware of it, and never wanted any. That is, until they started working at daycares. Well, this put them in a pickle, for they both realised that they could not give each other children. However, they also realised that unless one of them were to become a fully functioning man - which is impossible - there would be no rectifying this situation. They tried to continue fornicating. But the lust was no longer as potent as it was before. For they both knew it could never produce what the copulation of a man and his wife can. They could never, in that special way, share their love for each other no matter how hard they tried.

So they stopped fornicating, and they parted.

Even gays, I think, when they pull their heads out of their sphincters, can come to understand that the fornication between two men or two women can never parallel even the copulation between a man with a V and a woman with a TL.

For even by nature the man and woman have more chance to conceive than two gays! Because women cannot produce sperm, and men have neither wombs nor eggs. And therefore their genetic material can never be combined. Even if it could, women could not beget men, for they have no Y chromosomes. And we have not as yet seen what a YY chromosome pairing would look like (or what disorders may lurk behind such a thing).
 
TarkanAttila said:
Ah, leave the stupid troll alone.

Iron Donkey laid it out very well about 5 pages back. Gays are under no illusion that their fornication is able to produce children. Men and women who contracept are know they’re actively trying to prevent the conception of children. Men and women who get a vasectomy or a ligation are under no illusion that they didn’t do it because they wanted to actively prevent children. Men and women who NFP to purposefully avoid children know why they use NFP.

Spence is just either too stupid, too arrogant, or too myopic to understand that people have intentions behind their actions, and that the intentions, not the results, are the only things we can control.

He’s too wrapped up in the mechanics of it all to understand that there’s motivation behind it all. That people THINK about what they’re doing when they contracept, or when they have sex. After all, he reduces the MAN and the WOMAN - two human beings capable of thinking, and reasoning, and giving reasons for why they do things - to their reproductive organs, which don’t think or reason by themselves. He takes only a tiny part of the person into consideration and throws the rest away in his arguments.

But you can’t DO THAT. When people do things, they do them for a reason.

Now, when a married man and married woman come together in the coital act, and they both have their tubes cut/tied, is their act contraceptive?

Let us look at two “extremes”, if you will.

One couple, even with their tubal ligation and vasectomy, still has the woman taking a pill and the man wearing a condom, because they realise that there is the chance - the slight chance - that a TL or V could fail, and they want actively to prevent any chance of conceiving, even if it means his enjoyment is diminished, or her immune system is more vulnerable.

Clearly their intention is to prevent a child from being conceived, as we can see by their over-caution in using a condom and a pill, even with a TL and V.

Another couple, on the other hand, had a TL and V earlier in their marriage. But then, by ways unknown to us, they came to become faithful, obedient Catholics. (Yes, Spence. People do do it.) In the process they learned Vs and TLs are morally evil. And they were sorry that they had gotten their tubes snipped/tied. However they could not afford to reverse their procedures. So they said to each other, “We know we were wrong to have ourselves mutilated like this. While we may not want children ever, who are we to say that we shouldn’t be parents? How arrogant of us! Well, it may be unlikely we’ll ever conceive now. But let’s make love, and if it be God’s will, have a child.”

So they couched often, remembering often what they had said to each other, always keeping it in mind, confessing when they had sex without intending to have children, asking for forgiveness from each other and from God.

Clearly, even though their capacity is severely diminished by their situation, they still wish to fulfill God’s will. They once had not wished to, and had mutilated themselves. But their hearts are untied and uncut, even if it is unlikely their reproductive tracts will be.

And for kicks, let’s consider a third set: two women. They started out as sapphists - I refuse to call them by the proper name of the people of Lesbos, Greece, God help them - and fornicated often. Naturally, of course, their burning lust could never, ever produce children. And they were well aware of it, and never wanted any. That is, until they started working at daycares. Well, this put them in a pickle, for they both realised that they could not give each other children. However, they also realised that unless one of them were to become a fully functioning man - which is impossible - there would be no rectifying this situation. They tried to continue fornicating. But the lust was no longer as potent as it was before. For they both knew it could never produce what the copulation of a man and his wife can. They could never, in that special way, share their love for each other no matter how hard they tried.

So they stopped fornicating, and they parted.

Even gays, I think, when they pull their heads out of their sphincters, can come to understand that the fornication between two men or two women can never parallel even the copulation between a man with a V and a woman with a TL.

For even by nature the man and woman have more chance to conceive than two gays! Because women cannot produce sperm, and men have neither wombs nor eggs. And therefore their genetic material can never be combined. Even if it could, women could not beget men, for they have no Y chromosomes. And we have not as yet seen what a YY chromosome pairing would look like (or what disorders may lurk behind such a thing).
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Don’t you have anything better, say something that someone with a modern understanding of sexuality will say stands up to reason and knowledge?

If the premise is that ability to procreation is a requirement for morally acceptable sex, then stubborn insistence that sex between two people unable to produce children is somehow qualitatively different is simply wrong. Either there is a procreative ability, or there is not.

Elaborate rhetorical inventions which confer moral status on one set of infertile people, while denying it to others, is a false exercise on the face of it. And, it is mean spirited.
 
Regardless of fertility or infertility, marital sex is in no way comparable to sodomy.
 
JimG said:
Regardless of fertility or infertility, marital sex is in no way comparable to sodomy.
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Jim,

All words have origins and images that are conjured up…

Marital Sex…conjures up images that have historical context and understanding of circumstances…

Sodomy conjures up images that have historical context and understanding of circumstances…

To change the meaning one or the other requires erasing the historical content of the origin and usage of the word…
 
epan said:
Don’t you have anything better, say something that someone with a modern understanding of sexuality will say stands up to reason and knowledge?
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I love that – a “modern understanding of sexuality”!
Ah yes, those ignorant slobs of the middle ages. They had no idea what sex was all about. We of the 21st century are so “enlightened.” Talk about progressivism run amok!
epan said:
If the premise is that ability to procreation is a requirement for morally acceptable sex, then stubborn insistence that sex between two people unable to produce children is somehow qualitatively different is simply wrong. Either there is a procreative ability, or there is not.

Elaborate rhetorical inventions which confer moral status on one set of infertile people, while denying it to others, is a false exercise on the face of it. And, it is mean spirited.
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Let’s go over the basics again. It’s NOT the ability to procreate that is a requirement. Hasn’t that been clearly stated? A sterile man and woman are truly engaging in sex without any violation of natural law because their actions are ORDERED toward procreation. Read up again on it before replying, please.
 
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