SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

Same-sex “marriage” would further isolate marriage from its procreative purpose
PRO:
Marriage is not only for procreation, otherwise infertile couples or couples not
wishing to have children would be prevented from marrying.
So should we also prohibit straight couples from getting married if they’re biologically
incapable of having kids? What about if they simply don’t want kids?
The percentage of married couples with children has been declining over the last 25
years, but couples who don't want kids can still get married. And does adoption count?
Because around 19 percent of same-sex couples adopt kids.
Ability or desire to create offspring has never been a qualification for marriage. From
1970 through 2012 roughly 30% of all US households were married couples without
children, and in 2012, married couples without children outnumbered married couples
with children by 9%. [1] 6% of married women aged 15-44 are infertile, according to the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [2] In a 2010 Pew Research Center
survey, both married and unmarried people rated love, commitment, and
companionship higher than having children as "very important" reasons to get married,
and only 44% of unmarried people and 59% of married people rated having children as
a very important reason. [3] Several US presidents never had their own biological
children, including George Washington, often referred to as "the Father of Our
Country." [4] [5] As US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan noted, a marriage license
would be granted to a couple in which the man and woman are both over the age of 55,
even though "there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage." [6]
In addition, there are plenty of legal benefits — like hospital visitation rights, joint tax
returns, welfare benefits for spouses, and estate inheritance — that married couples
enjoy regardless of whether or not they choose to have children. Should the
government prevent straight couples from receiving those benefits until they have kids?

Sources:
[1] Jonathan Vespa, Jamie M. Lewis, and Rose M. Kreider, "America’s Families and Living Arrangements:
2012," census.gov, Aug. 2013
[2] National Center for Health Statistics, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Infertility,"
cdc.gov, Feb. 13, 2014
[3] D'Vera Cohn, "Love and Marriage," pewsocialtrends.org, Feb. 13, 2014
[4] Margaret Talbot, "Marriage as a Dynamic Institution," www.newyorker.com, Jan. 12, 2010
[5] Jerome Nathaniel, "5 U.S. Presidents Who Were Never Fathers," Policy.Mic website, June 17, 2013
[6] US Supreme Court, Oral Arguments in Dennis Hollingsworth, et al., v. Kristen M. Perry, et al., Mar. 26,
2013
CON:
Marriage is for procreation and should not be extended to same-sex couples
because they cannot produce children together. Allowing gay marriage would only
further shift the purpose of marriage from producing and raising children to adult
gratification. [1] A California Supreme Court ruling from 1859 stated that "the first
purpose of matrimony, by the laws of nature and society, is procreation." [2] Nobel Prize-
winning philosopher Bertrand Russell stated that "it is through children alone that sexual
relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal
institution." [3] Court papers filed in July 2014 by attorneys defending Arizona's gay
marriage ban stated that "the State regulates marriage for the primary purpose of
channeling potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring unions for the sake
of joining children to both their mother and their father... Same-sex couples can never
provide a child with both her biological mother and her biological father." Contrary to the
pro gay marriage argument that some different-sex couples cannot have children or
don't want them, even in those cases there is still the potential to produce children.
Seemingly infertile heterosexual couples sometimes produce children, and medical
advances may allow others to procreate in the future. Heterosexual couples who do not
wish to have children are still biologically capable of having them, and may change their
minds. [4]
Sources:
[1] Dana Mack, "Now What for Marriage?," www.wsj.com, Aug. 6, 2010
[2] Ed. Basil Jones, "The American Ruling Cases as Determined by the Courts: Including the
Fundamental Cases of England and Canada; Also All Reviewing and Illustrating Cases of Material Value
from the Latest Official Reports, Completely Annotated," books.google.com, 1917
[3] Ross Douthat, "Marriage, Procreation and Historical Amnesia," nytimes.com Apr. 2, 2013
[4] Meredith Clark, "Arizona Points to Procreation to Defend Gay Marriage Ban," msnbc.com, July 25,
2014