David Quinn has recently authored a post on the Iona Institute website where he discusses, what he calls, the child-centred vs adult-centred view of marriage.
Bishop Kevin Doran said at a talk on Thursday night organised by The Iona Institute that if we permit same-sex marriage, the link between marriage as an institution and procreation will have been destroyed. This is the child-centred view of marriage.
Brian Sheehan of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) responded by offering a very adult-centred view of marriage thereby proving Bishop Doran’s point.
Brian (who is one of the nice guys of the same-sex marriage movement by the way), told The Irish Times in response to Bishop Doran that marriage was “about two people who share a deep love making a profound commitment to each other to share their lives together. There is no requirement for any couple getting married to say they want or are going to have children. It is just seen as a profound commitment to another human being.”
As I say, this rather proves Bishop Doran’s point because Brian’s vision of marriage is extremely adult-centred rather than child-centred.
Brian is correct, of course, to say that couples can marry who can’t have children, but then again couples can also marry who don’t love each other. Marriages of convenience are not unheard of after all.
But does this ‘prove’ marriage isn’t about love? Of course not. All it proves is that being in love isn’t an absolute requirement of marriage. And nor is having children an absolute requirement.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of people still, quite rightly, associate marriage with both love and children.
As you can see Quinn makes very contrary points: he concedes that because couples who can’t have children marry that doesn’t mean marriage isn’t about having children, and because couples who don’t love each other marry that doesn’t mean marriage isn’t about love. Reasonable statements. But why, then, at the very start of the post does Quinn make the opposite point, that allowing same-sex couples to marry will somehow destroy the link between marriage and children? Why is the logic completely reversed when it comes to gay people?
This inconsistency is further puzzling when the statistics are analyzed. The percentage of married couples who are infertile is 12%, as reported by the CDC, whereas the percentage of LGBT people is, at most, 3%. So how does allowing 12% of people, who can’t conceive, to marry not break the link between marriage and children yet if we allow a mere 3% to marry then somehow this destroys the link altogether? This makes no sense.
Allowing people who can’t have children to marry either does or doesn’t break the link between marriage and children. It makes no sense to claim that it doesn’t break the link to allow subset A to marry but it will break the link to allow subset B to marry especially when subset A is four times greater than subset B. So which is it Quinn? Does allowing people who can’t have children to marry break the link between marriage and children, and if it does then when will your quest to prevent infertile people from marrying begin?
