The following is a Facebook response to a friends post relative to the opinion of Robert George in this article:
I am very familiar with George's work, having relied on it to beat back the same-sex union bill here in Guam in 2009. But ultimately I had to move beyond it because the core of his argument is that marriage is inherently fertile. With most of the population chemically, surgically, or mechanically controlling their fertility - including most Christians - the argument, though true, in practice, fails.
Even the use of NFP by Catholics is almost everywhere deeply flawed because the morality of the method depends on "just cause" - a contingency which is rarely examined or counseled.
SSM is simply an extension of the principal of the primacy of pleasure - made possible by contraception and even NFP - already long embraced by supposed traditional marriage couples.
The only argument left to us is the one Sotomayor (amazingly) proffered. It is essentially this question: "where do you draw the line?" If you would not limit marriage to one man or one woman, what would you limit it to and why, or would you limit it at all?
Unfortunately, she waded into the polygamy question and Olson was prepared for that. It would have been better if she had raised the prospects of eliminating already existing restrictions on marriage such as consanguinity, affinity, etc., and asked whether or not even non-sexual marriages should be allowed (e.g. a marriage between a father and a daughter for the purposes of passing on benefits). Since only love is the criterion, all things are possible.
However, the courts best defense is the ruling in Loving v Virginia wherein the court ruled that marriage was necessary for the "survival of society" and the fact that the Loving court did not need to explain it - explains it.
Ultimately, this argument would bring us back to George's point and would force us all to recognize that it is heterosexuals who have abused marriage to the point where advocates of SSM, which is nothing more than the sterile sex most Americans already practice, feel empowered to challenge TM's exclusivity.
