Dear Fr. Robert:

If I've understood you correctly, I believe you have perhaps misunderstood a feature of Michael P.'s position.  Of course, Michael can speak for himself, but I'm sure he is not arguing that same-sex unions should be the definition of marital relations, replacing opposite-sex unions.  Rather, he is arguing that marriage should be understood and defined as the union of two persons irrespective of sex.  In other words, he thinks that biological-sexual complementarity is not essential to marriage, properly understood.  So "gay marriagses" and "straight marriages" are both marriages.  Of course, marriage, if Michael is right, is not what you and I think it is, namely, a truly (and not merely metaphorically) one-flesh union--a comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life founded on a mutual commitment sealed (consummated) by organic bodily union (the kind of union achieved by spouses in acts in which they lovingly fulfill the behavioral conditions of procreation, irrespective of whether the nonbehavioral conditions of procreation happen to obtain) that has its distinctive character and special meaning and value inasmuch as it is the type of relationship that is naturally fulfilled by the begetting, bearing, and rearing of children.  However, since opposite sex marriages would exist alongside same-sex marriages in the event that Michael's view prevailed, there would be no special threat to the reproductive viability of the species.  Michael's view, as I understand it, is that there are two (or at least two) sexual orientations:  the heterosexual and the homosexual.  Persons of each orientation find fulfillment in romantic-sexual partnerships of the type they are oriented towards.  Insofar as they are fulfilling of the persons participating in them, such partnerships are humanly good and morally upright.  A large majority of humans are heterosexually oriented, and most of them will have children as a result of their ordinary sexual congress.  A comparatively small minority are homosexually oriented.  Some of them will rear adopted children; some will have children by using assisted reproduction technologies (which are also used by some heterosexuals); and some (like some heterosexuals) will be childless.  Michael's belief is that there is nothing morally wrong with same-sex sexual acts and sexual partnerships as such.  I don't agree.  My reasons, though, which I have set forth in the writings I mentioned in my previous post, do not have to do with a concern that the human race will die out (though historically, as Harvard sociologist and demographer Carle Zimmerman pointed out in Family and Civilization (1948), there does seem to be a cross-cultural correlation between the general social acceptance of permissive views about sexuality--whether or not the acceptance of homosexual conduct is a big part of the picture--and demographic decline).