Do infertile couples clinch the case for same-sex marriage?

Next week, the US Supreme Court will begin its deliberations on the contentious issue of same-sex marriage. One of the two cases it will hear concerns California’sProposition 8, an approved state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. One of the objections to this amendment brought by lawyers Ted Olsen and David Boies for the two same-sex couples who seek to overturn it is that, “this court has never conditioned the right to marry on the ability to procreate”.

That is exactly right.

No court has ever made the ability to marry contingent on the ability to procreate. In the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case in 2010, which first found Proposition 8unconstitutional, US District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker stated that the ability to produce offspring has never been a prerequisite for granting heterosexual couples marriage licenses.

But what is the relevance of this point to the case at hand and why is it at the center of the argument against exclusively heterosexual marriage?

The pro-homosexual movement uses the matter of infertility in an attempt to gain traction for same-sex marriage by pointing out that if infertile heterosexual couples can marry, then the ability to procreate cannot be a prerequisite for or essential to marriage. Therefore, they reason, homosexuals should also be allowed to marry. However, this argument works only if there is no distinction between the infertility of homosexual relations and those of an infertile heterosexual couple. In other words, all infertilities would have to be equal, ie, existing for the same reason.

Is this so?

It is not. Homosexual relations are essentially sterile, while heterosexual relations are only accidentally sterile. In fact, they are not even both infertilities properly speaking. This is a smokescreen used to deflect attention from the real underlying issue. Infertility is an issue only in respect to those whose exercise of their procreative powers in heterosexual intercourse has failed for some reason that may be due to congenital or temporary health problems.

Read more at Mercator.Net.