Just a bit more on SSM

Regarding my earlier post, a readers asks why I have a problem with renaming civil marriage as "civil unions" and leaving marriage to religious communities.  My problem is with the set of norms (or lack thereof) that come with civil unions.  "Marriage" comes with a lot of cultural baggage -- some bad, but mostly good.  The expectations of permanence, exclusivity, and openness to child-rearing are hugely important signals and encouragements to marriage participants.  Maybe we could load some of that into the institution of "civil unions," but I'm not sure how.

I have two comments on Fr. Araujo's helpful response to my post.  First, if we're going to convince society to reject same-sex marriage, I'm not sure that it's enough to argue that, in light of the natural differences between the genders, marriage must consist of different genders.  There needs to be a nexus between the biological fact and the function/purpose of marriage, doesn't there?  With the prevalence of adoption and assisted reproduction technology, the nexus is not as obvious as it once was.  If studies could show that same-sex parenting leads to sub-optimal outcomes in children, we might have that nexus.  But I don't think we can know that at this stage.

Second, I agree that racial differences are a superficial distinction on which to base a marriage ban.  But propopents of those bans did not think so.  If they viewed marriage as the means by which to propagate the race, keeping marriage within the race might be an understandable (but erroneous) limitation flowing from marriage's purported nature.  There is a much stronger case for marriage, by its very nature, being limited to a man and woman, but we still need to connect the dots, and that's where it becomes trickier.  We can't just assert a biological fact as the public policy conclusion.

Finally, I hope that I do not come across as purporting to possess all the answers to these very difficult questions.  I'm struggling not only to articulate where I stand on these huge socio-legal-political-moral issues, I'm struggling to discern where I stand.  I greatly appreciate the constructive feedback and challenging perspectives offered by others.