Michael Hannon offers a clever analogy to make a profound point about definitions and reality:
"...By way of illustration, let me return to the natatorium. Water polo is a sport in which seven players swim around in a deep pool, cooperating in an effort to beat the opposing team while abiding by the rules of the game. A water polo team, then, is simply a group of people who play this sport with one another, who band together to win water polo games against other teams. Thus playing water polo is the characteristic activity of a water polo team, meaning not only that it reveals or witnesses to what this team is, but also that it actually makes this team what it is. It is in virtue of their playing water polo that a group of people is a water polo team at all.
Given that, it is obviously insufficient for forming a water polo team that a group of seven people just swim laps around the pool during what would otherwise be a water polo game. To qualify as this particular type of association, the seven must actually do the thing that makes them this type of association. To be a water polo team, the group must play water polo. This also means that, were the seven for some reason incapable of doing the activity characteristic of such team-ship, they could not be a water polo team. Seven people who cannot swim cannot form a team.
What does any of this have to do with marriage? As with water polo, to get at what marriage is, we should ask what the characteristic activity of marriage is. As nearly every society in history has recognized, marriage’s characteristic action is sexual intercourse. Thus coitus is classically termed the “marital act”, and it has traditionally been said to “consummate” the marriage, in a way that no other act—sexual or otherwise—can." (First Things)
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What a distinctly Catholic perspective! Thank you, NOM, for your wisdom.
Clever? Profound? Really?
These analogies are helpful to some, but I find them unnecessary. The public interest in marriage is uniting children to their mother and father, providing them legal protection and social recognition. Marriage provides children with a knowledge of their history through lineage.
Pseudo-marriage severs all these links and ignores the rights of children. It perceives children as commodities to be bought and sold. It places the selfish desires of adults over the rights of children.
Pretty straightforward. No analogy needed.
Getting good Barb. Getting good. Gets clearer and stronger each time you come back at it. Like a sculptor chiseling a rock; there's no need to play in the sand.
Marriage: the joining of opposites
Or to quote a recent DC appellate court decision: words matter.
I think analogies help people understand, but analogies assume the person already understands the concept in another context. Of course, analogies do not prove anything - they simply trigger an understanding in a separate context.
SSmers use lots of analogies. In fact, they use nothing else but analogies and parallels to "equate" their partnership with natural marriage.
In this case of water polo, the author is trying to say that to really understand natural marriage:
a) It takes every ounce of strength to play marriage
b) One understands it by doing it
c) One is either "in" (with the team) or "out". One is either acting out marriage, or just messing around in pseudo-marriage.
How true. Some people marry, just for US citizenship. . .
That is marriage; but non-marital relationships can also engender children or provide a home for destitute children, not optimally on average, but sometime better than nothing. And some marriages are cruel to their children, or engage in incest. [That is marriage gone abusive - government must intervene. But generally, government doesn't have to spend on marriage. ]
That means that non-marital relationships must also be recognized by the State for what they are, and supported to some extent (for children's sake - same rational argument), or penalized (single moms) for children's sake. This recognition must be separate from civil marriage, and separate from civil unions (at State and Federal levels).
But that has nothing to do with same-sex attraction. Note that all SSm legislation is not called "gay marriage" - none. An aunt needing to live with her adult niece should be allowed to register by consent, to be granted special automatic privileges. We all agree with that. If a same-sex friendship wants to adopt a child, the arrangement could be given low priority over opposite-sex friendships, because the latter would offer a mommy and daddy figure (both).
This is the solution to SSm.
Sure, and if this were 1966 the author might be talking about how being of the same race has always been a characteristic of marriage in the US, and is therefore an essential aspect absolutely required in order for a union to be considered marriage!
Polo is a game played on horseback with mallets. The water a game played in a pool without mallets as polo redefines the essence of the word polo. Please, water "polo" players, find a new word. Do not deprive the word polo of its historic, equine meaning.
Instead of water polo, how about "water poke you". In polo, at least the horse does most of the work. In water poke you, just to think of it, is exhausting
Marriage is a lifelong commitment to another adult. It is not a sex act. Straight couples can define their marriages however they see fit. So if Dan and Cathy decide to get married and never have children (they'd rather have a house full of cats and dogs), they have the right to do that in our country. NOM does not have the right to define Dan and Cathy's marriage, and they don't have the right to define marriage for gay couples either. You cannot use hypothetical children to disenfranchise gay citizens, when you don't use them against Dan and Cathy.
"Sure, and if this were 1966 the author might be talking about how being of the same race has always been a characteristic of marriage in the US..."
But that would be a lie and historically inaccurate.
Problem with this analogy:
You're not actually arguing about the activity, but who can be allowed to play.
I notice that there isn't anything analogous to NOM's position included in the analogy. Kind of a shortcoming, wouldn't y'say?
Are marriage corruption supporters backing off on the nature of their depravity as a rational for special consideration?
David where-ever: hypothetical children? Yes.
" DAVID does not have the right to define Dan and Cathy's marriage..."
Married couples don't have to engender children. They could adapt and adopt. But they offer a woman and a man to act the role of mom and dad (though they are not, in actuality) for an adopted child. That's the point.
Are you stating that everyone who gets married should pass a fertility test? And would that fertility test be applied to SSm?
Fertility comes and goes, and it is purposefully (not an oversight) not a requirement for marriage, because it is impractical to check for it. Imagine!
But it is not impractical to check for fertility within same-sex couples. There. it's done. Therefore Danielle and Cathy are out. Thanks for proving it by logic. You're good