A story broke on July 15 that I’ve been meaning to write about. During an interview[1] with Florian Mundt, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, made it clear that she does not want Germany to follow the American example of making legal provision for same-sex marriage. Merkel said she supports civil unions with benefits equal to marriage, but she “make[s] a different at some point.” For her, that point is the definition of marriage: “For me, personally, marriage is a man and a woman living together.”
While I disagree with Merkel that same-sex couples should receive the same benefits as married couples, her position is actually quite sensible. Essentially she is saying “Same-sex couples should be treated as equal to married couples in every way, but they have no right to have their relationship called a ‘marriage’ because a marriage is, by nature, a male-female union.” She is drawing on the intuition that “marriage” has an essence – that marriage is fundamentally a male-female union, and thus it is impossible for a same-sex union to be a marriage. This position is quite rational since it is based on objective observations about human nature and biological function.
Humans are gendered beings, and our sexual organs are designed to function only with the opposite sex (i.e. our sexual organs are inherently incomplete, and only achieve their biological purpose when united with the sexual organ of the opposite sex). A sexual union of male and female has the natural capacity to produce new life. Of all the different kinds of human relationships, the kind of relationship that can join together two sexual halves into a sexual whole capable of generating new human beings is absolutely unique. We call this kind of relationship a “marriage” (the marriage covenant formalizes this organic union with a commitment to keep the union intact until death).
So the institution of marriage is based on the objective nature of human biology and fulfills the practical need of managing the children that naturally and typically result from hetero-sex unions. “Marriage” describes a particular kind of relationship that fulfills a particular role in society. Since the sexual union of same-sex couples does not form a sexual whole and is not capable of generating new human life, their union is not of the marital sort and should not be called “marriage.”
Angela Merkel’s refusal to call same-sex unions “marriage” is not an example of unjust discrimination, but a principled position based on the objective nature of the marital relationship. “Marriage” refers to a specific kind of relationship, and since same-sex unions do not fit the description, they should not be called “marriages.” Merkel does not want to engage in verbal fictions by calling a relationship a “marriage” that is not of the marital sort. Calling a same-sex union “marriage” is like calling a person with brown skin a “Caucasian” simply because they want to be identified by that term. “Caucasian” is a term that refers specifically to people with white skin. To apply the term to people with brown skin would not just change the meaning of “Caucasian,” but would eviscerate it of its meaning. If “marriage” is expanded to include same-sex couples, then what word remains to describe the unique relationship that produces a sexual whole and is capable of generating new human life? It is absurd to change the definition of marriage simply because same-sex couples want their relationship to be identified by that term, and then be left without a term to describe the unique relationship of hetero-sex couples, or to come up with a new term. Merkel is absolutely right to draw the line at the definition of “marriage.”
See also:
[1]David Trayner, “Angela Merkel doesn’t believe in gay marriage – ‘For me, personally, marriage is a man and a woman living together’”; available from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/angela-merkel-gay-marriage-vote-germany-10389762.html; accessed 22 July 2015.
Thinking to Believe 
August 4, 2015 at 9:20 am
Jason:
The following statement can be said of every other animal experience. “Of all the different kinds of “animal” relationships, the kind of relationship that can join together two sexual halves into a sexual whole capable of generating new “animal” beings is absolutely unique. (compared to the different roles of other, various animal relationships)
Angela Merkel.
“For me, personally, marriage is a man and a woman living together.”
That is not a unique statement; it is the same statement that I make but that Angela and I both agree on. The argument is not what she and I accept as fundamental to the human experience; the argument is what other people accept as fundamental to their human experience.
Consider this study about sexual roles that describe three specific role playing models, the tops(male) the bottoms(female) and the versatiles.
Several years ago, a team of scientists led by Trevor Hart at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta studied a group of of 205 gay male participants. Among the group’s major findings—reported in a 2003 issue of The Journal of Sex Research —were these:
(1) Self-labels are meaningfully correlated with actual sexual behaviors. That is to say, based on self-reports of their recent sexual histories, those who identify as tops are indeed more likely to act as the insertive partner, bottoms are more likely be the receptive partner, and versatiles occupy an intermediate status in sex behavior.
(2) Compared to bottoms, tops are more frequently engaged in (or at least they acknowledge being attracted to) other insertive sexual behaviors. For example, tops also tend to be the more frequent insertive partner during oral intercourse. In fact, this finding of the generalizability of top/bottom self-labels to other types of sexual practices was also uncovered in a correlational study by David Moskowitz, Gerulf Reiger and Michael Roloff. In a 2008 issue of Sexual and Relationship Therapy, these scientists reported that tops were more likely to be the insertive partner in everything from sex-toy play to verbal abuse to urination play.
(3) Tops were more likely than both bottoms and versatiles to reject a gay self-identity and to have had sex with a woman in the past three months. They also manifested higher internalized homophobia—essentially the degree of self-loathing linked to their homosexual desires.
(4) Versatiles seem to enjoy better psychological health. Hart and his coauthors speculate that this may be due to their greater sexual sensation seeking, lower erotophobia (fear of sex), and greater comfort with a variety of roles and activities.
Which makes it obvious that definite roles are assumed in same sex relationships. hetero and homo and what one can admit is the similar role as those who agree with the statement, “For me, personally, marriage is a man and a woman living together.”
Whether this behavior appalls or appeals it is and will continue to be a human experience, (without further, future medical intervention) will continue inasmuch as the words of Jesus declared it to be so in Matthew 19:
“11 But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”
I accept that.
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