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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 12:28 PM Mar 2013

The Sexual Fetish of Gay Marriage Opponents

The Sexual Fetish of Gay Marriage Opponents

Defenders of DOMA and Proposition 8 say marriage isn’t about love or parenting. It’s about coitus.

By Mark Joseph Stern|Posted Friday, March 22, 2013, at 6:00 AM


As the Supreme Court prepares to hear Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor, opponents of same-sex marriage have scrambled to answer the central question: What is the government’s rational interest in preventing gays from marrying? The standard argument from moral disapproval was revoked by Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas. The argument that gay marriages undermine the family has been debunked by a decade of same-sex marriage in several countries. So, as Proposition 8 and DOMA wound their way through the courts, gay marriage opponents lit upon a more durable argument, seemingly grounded in science rather than animus or religion. Their case, presented most comprehensively by Princeton professor Robert P. George, is that only sex acts with a “dynamism toward reproduction”—that is, penile to vaginal intercourse—create true marriages and lead to legitimate child-rearing. Same-sex marriages, by this theory, are not “real” marriages, because they do not involve “organic bodily union.”

This argument puts gay marriage opponents in an awkward position. For years, they said gays were too libidinous and licentious to create stable marriages. Now, as proponents of gay marriage emphasize love, fidelity, and commitment, the right is fetishizing coitus.

The debate between marriage-as-love and marriage-as-coital-vehicle permeates the amici briefs that have flooded the court. George’s amicus—an abridged version of his book—pits the hallowed “conjugal” view of marriage against the destructive “revisionist” view. According to George, the revisionist view sees marriage as “essentially an emotional union, accompanied by consensual sexual activity.” The conjugal view, on the other hand, sees marriage as “begun by commitment and sealed by sexual intercourse.”

What’s so crucial about heterosexual intercourse? According to George, it’s “completed in the acts by which new life is made” and therefore “is especially apt for and deepened by procreation, and calls for that broad sharing uniquely fit for family life.”

-snip-

full article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/03/gay_marriage_and_sex_why_do_defenders_of_doma_and_prop_8_worship_coitus.html
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Lex

(34,108 posts)
1. The thing is, there are lots of heterosexual unions that cannot produce offspring.
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 12:33 PM
Mar 2013

Older folks marry, sterile (or whatever you choose to call it) people marry, people whose physical disabilities disallow sexual intercourse, etc.

No one is saying these people shouldn't be allowed to marry.

EOTE

(13,409 posts)
3. Give the fundies some time, I'm sure they're considering.
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 12:43 PM
Mar 2013

Anything to bolster their animosity towards those different from them.

Lex

(34,108 posts)
7. The fundies were against inter-racial marriage
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 01:18 PM
Mar 2013

because it "mixed blood" (or some such) and they used the Bible to justify being against it.





TrogL

(32,818 posts)
4. I made this argument at a recent same-sex marriage debate
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 12:46 PM
Mar 2013

Craftygal has her tubes tied, I'm old enough and have been exposed to enough stuff that I have no intention of procreation - I'd probably father a disabled child. Yet, the church and state allowed us to marry.

Sheldon Cooper

(3,724 posts)
8. Along with infertile couples, there are those who refuse to reproduce.
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 01:19 PM
Mar 2013

Nowhere in the marriage agreement are they required to swear that they'll at least try to have children. But yet they're allowed to marry - this argument is bogus and the whole world knows it.

Wounded Bear

(58,440 posts)
9. Much like the abortion debate...it has always been about sex...
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 01:22 PM
Mar 2013

and controlling how people can share and enjoy sex with others. Sacred feti and and the sanctity of marriage are window dressing.

LibertyLover

(4,788 posts)
12. According to George, my husband and I, a heterosexual couple,
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 01:38 PM
Mar 2013
do not have a true marriage because none of our "organic bodily unions" could never result in my getting pregnant since he had had a vasectomy years before we met and married. Additionally, I was 45 when we married and already experiencing perimenapause, meaning that even if my husband had been producing seminal fluid with viable sperm, my chances of getting pregnant from an "organic bodily union" were pretty poor. I guess I'll have to tell him tonight that we aren't really married. I wonder if the state of Maryland will give me a pass on paying him allimony because we didn't have a "real" marriage according to Professor George? I imagine that I'd have to have the good Professor testify at my divorce hearing. I'm sure he'll do it for free.

Just in case:
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