If your son were to tell you that he has discovered that is he “gay,” would you then approve of same-sex unions? If your answer is “yes,” then you also think that his sexual identity is not determined by the structures of his body. You have to believe that his sexual identity comes from somewhere else, generally described in the culture as “sexual orientation.” You have to believe that your son cannot know his sexual identity until he experiences his “orientation” toward his preferred object of sexual gratification.

In addition, you will also have accepted the modern contraceptive mentality whose first principle is that human sexuality is not intrinsically linked to the passing on of the gift of life to a new generation. You have to believe that it is possible and licit to break the link that sexuality has with generativity in order to be free to pursue other goods. You have to believe therefore that “getting” rather than “giving” is at the heart of the sexual experience. If marriage is the institutionalized form of satisfying sexual desires, you have to believe that there is nothing oxymoronic about the notion of the “heterosexual marriage” since most people prefer to satisfy sexual desires with the opposite sex. Since you had the opportunity to have a “heterosexual marriage” in accord with your “heterosexual orientation,” you would be concerned about removing the “injustice” of the societal refusal to recognize a “homosexual marriage” for your son. After all, what has become of civil rights?

If, however, your answer to our initial question is ‘no,” then you believe that sexual identity is directly linked to the human body. Your son’s sexuality is not a question of the “orientation” of his appetites. The virtue of chastity comes to rectify the sexual appetites of everyone whatever the orientation of their sexual appetites may be. This rectification comes about by conforming the appetites to the truth of one’s sexuality as revealed by the body. The body reveals that sexuality is to be an expression of self-donation in the service of life. The institutionalized form of this donation is marriage. Thus, marriage comes only in one form: the marriage of two persons who are a biological couple (one male and the other female), capable of those acts that initiate the process of giving birth to children. If the answer for you is “no,” these are the only acts that you could consider to be the marital acts that are capable of consummating marriage. The consequence of this view is that you are also bound to hold that only a man and woman are capable of marriage.

If you believe that generativity gives marriage its first definition, then the notion of “heterosexual” and “homosexual” marriage makes no sense. Neither can you believe that sodomy and contracepted sex are marital acts. The fact that society only institutionalizes sexual unions of biological couples you would not consider unjust to those who choose not to be a biological couple.

Let’s begin the public debate about same-sex unions by putting the myths of heterosexuality and its twin, homosexuality, under the microscope. We will discover that they are all distortions, in one way or another, of human sexuality. Moreover, they are based on an anthropology that is hostile to the very nature of marriage and the family that the state is obliged to foster. Keep the government neutral and let the other players in society fight the cultural wars. Giving civil benefits to these distortions would hijack the state into favoring one side over the other.