Obergefell v. Hodges: Get your bets inFollow

Not even one written by a Heritage Foundation member and some guy heralded as the "most important Christian conservative of our time"? I'm sure it strives to give a balanced and historically factual view of the issues.

Now, we've got the "most important Christian conservative of our time" making the same argument I've been making all along.

I like the part of the linked bit where it gave as a reason to keep marriage as only between a man and a woman "to teach others what real marriage is".

I liked the phrase "organic bodily union"

Hear that homosexual people? Your sex doesn't count as REAL "organic bodily union" so you guys don't deserve marriage. Weirdos.

1. Comprehensive Union
Marriage is distinguished from every other form of friend‐
ship inasmuch as it is comprehensive. It involves a sharing of
lives and resources, and a union of minds and wills—hence,
among other things, the requirement of consent for forming a
marriage. But on the conjugal view, it also includes organic
bodily union. This is because the body is a real part of the per‐
son, not just his costume, vehicle, or property. Human beings
are not properly understood as nonbodily persons—minds,
ghosts, consciousnesses—that inhabit and use nonpersonal
bodies. After all, if someone ruins your car, he vandalizes your
property, but if he amputates your leg, he injures you. Because
the body is an inherent part of the human person, there is a dif‐
ference in kind between vandalism and violation; between de‐
struction of property and mutilation of bodies.

Likewise, because our bodies are truly aspects of us as per‐
sons, any union of two people that did not involve organic
bodily union would not be comprehensive—it would leave out
an important part of each person’s being. Because persons are
body‐mind composites, a bodily union extends the relationship
of two friends along an entirely new dimension of their being
as persons. If two people want to unite in the comprehensive
way proper to marriage, they must (among other things) unite
organically—that is, in the bodily dimension of their being.

This necessity of bodily union can be seen most clearly by
imagining the alternatives. Suppose that Michael and Michelle
build their relationship not on sexual exclusivity, but on tennis
exclusivity. They pledge to play tennis with each other, and
only with each other, until death do them part. Are they
thereby married? No. Substitute for tennis any nonsexual activ‐
ity at all, and they still aren’t married: Sexual exclusivity—
exclusivity with respect to a specific kind of bodily union—is
required. But what is it about sexual intercourse that makes it
uniquely capable of creating bodily union? People’s bodies can
touch and interact in all sorts of ways, so why does only sexual
union make bodies in any significant sense “one flesh”?

Our organs—our heart and stomach, for example—are parts
of one body because they are coordinated, along with other
parts, for a common biological purpose of the whole: our bio‐
logical life. It follows that for two individuals to unite organi‐
cally, and thus bodily, their bodies must be coordinated for
some biological purpose of the whole.

That sort of union is impossible in relation to functions such as
digestion and circulation, for which the human individual is by
nature sufficient. But individual adults are naturally incomplete
with respect to one biological function: sexual reproduction. In coi‐
tus, but not in other forms of sexual contact, a man and a woman’s
bodies coordinate by way of their sexual organs for the common
biological purpose of reproduction. They perform the first step of
the complex reproductive process. Thus, their bodies become, in a
strong sense, one—they are biologically united, and do not merely
rub together—in coitus (and only in coitus), similarly to the way
in which one’s heart, lungs, and other organs form a unity: by co‐
ordinating for the biological good of the whole. In this case, the
whole is made up of the man and woman as a couple, and the
biological good of that whole is their reproduction.

Here is another way of looking at it. Union on any plane—
bodily, mental, or whatever—involves mutual coordination on
that plane, toward a good on that plane. When Einstein and
Bohr discussed a physics problem, they coordinated intellectu‐
ally for an intellectual good, truth. And the intellectual union
they enjoyed was real, whether or not its ultimate target (in this
case, a theoretical solution) was reached—assuming, as we
safely can, that both Einstein and Bohr were honestly seeking
truth and not merely pretending while engaging in deception
or other acts which would make their apparent intellectual un‐
ion only an illusion.

By extension, bodily union involves mutual coordination to‐
ward a bodily good—which is realized only through coitus.
And this union occurs even when conception, the bodily good
toward which sexual intercourse as a biological function is ori‐
ented, does not occur. In other words, organic bodily unity is
achieved when a man and woman coordinate to perform an act
of the kind that causes conception. This act is traditionally
called the act of generation or the generative act;15 if (and only
if) it is a free and loving expression of the spouses’ permanent
and exclusive commitment, then it is also a marital act.

Because interpersonal unions are valuable in themselves, and
not merely as means to other ends, a husband and wife’s loving
bodily union in coitus and the special kind of relationship to
which it is integral are valuable whether or not conception results
and even when conception is not sought. But two men or two
women cannot achieve organic bodily union since there is no bod‐
ily good or function toward which their bodies can coordinate,
reproduction being the only candidate.16 This is a clear sense in
which their union cannot be marital, if marital means comprehen‐
sive and comprehensive means, among other things, bodily.

Revisionists, moreover, have said what they think marriage
is not (for example, inherently opposite‐sex), but have only
rarely (and vaguely) explained what they think marriage is.
Consequently, because it is easier to criticize a received view
than to construct a complete alternative, revisionist arguments
have had an appealing simplicity. But these arguments are also
vulnerable to powerful criticisms that revisionists do not have
the resources to answer. This Article, by contrast, makes a posi‐
tive case, based on three widely held principles, for what
makes a marriage.

This is because in truth marriage is not a mere means, even to the great good of procreation. It is an end in itself, worthwhile for its own sake. So it can exist apart from children, and the state can recognize it in such cases.

It's all just promoting ancient rituals and blocking social advancement and modernization for the sake of maintaining the status quo. Conservatism for conservatism's sake.

I would argue that in today's world, promoting marriage for procreation's sake is unwise. There are overpopulation issues already. We don't need to continue making more people, we need to do a better job of taking care of the ones that are already here. LBGT marriage is the perfect cure: creating a non-reproductive family unit to care for the cast-off progeny of failed hetero unions. Because there will always be babies, in *and out* of wedlock. Unless we made procreation out of wedlock a criminal offense, to preserve the sanctity of "real marriage".

I'd also like gbaji to explain how sharia law is bad but basing US law on a very specific (narrow) Christian view is A-OK.

So a married hetero couple who only does the, er, non-organically bodily union type of sexual congress are not really married?

You guys are spending more time not reading it than it would take to just read it.

You're comparing all sharia law to just our marriage laws?