"I myself as a believer and a mother, if one day my son tells me, ' I have found someone whom we love each other. We intend to get married to spend the rest of our life. But it is a he. Will you come to our marriage to give us your blessing?' I will say yes. This is the love of a mother towards her son. Among faith, hope and love, love is the greatest. When you learn that sexual orientation is inborn, you will understand the wishes of homosexuals are based on love. The world is changing everyday because human beings are changing. There were matriarchal societies, polygamy (nowadays, some religions and local customs still allow polygamy). Now, same sex marriage is part of human history."
Last time, I did not have enough time to deal with this last part of my sister-in-law's message. I bluntly said that it was full of fallacies and I owe her an explanation.
Let me begin with "The world is changing everyday because human beings are changing."
This is obvious but a lot of things have been oversimplified.
Many things remain unchanged. For example, Men are mortal. Human beings are born immaturely. They need a relatively stable community to grow up and it takes years for them to develop their full potentials. Moreover, only women can give birth to children. Men cannot. They need to work together to bring forth new human beings. That is why a social institution called marriage is established to provide such a stable community.
"There were matriarchal societies, polygamy (nowadays, some religions and local customs still allow polygamy)."
There are different forms of marriage, e.g. monogamy, bigamy and polygamy. All of them involve the pairing up men and women. There are two types of polygamy: polyandry in which a woman has several husbands at the same time; and polygyny in which a man has several wives at the same time. One thing remains unchanged. Polygamy is heterosexual. It involves joining men and women together.
It is easy to imagine human society to begin with matriarchy because a mother-child relationship was easier to recognize while it was more difficult to see the link of a baby with its biological father. Furthermore, it is easy to imagine a matriarchal society to practice polyandry. It is supposed to be a manifestation of women power over men. But anthropologists tell us that power actually fall into the hand of the brother of the matriarch, the uncle of the offspring, a man. When women were busy giving birth to babies and nursing them, it is easy to imagine a coup d'etat in which men overthrew matriarchy to set up patriarchal societies. Furthermore, men began to take advantage of the reproductive capacity of women and enslave them. Polygyny arose. Such arrangements cannot arise without appropriate social-economical environment to support them. A man cannot support several wives unless he has enough physical, psychological and financial strength as well as favourable social factors to enable him. A king can afford 3000 concubines while a beggar can have at most one. At most, the so called analysis above can only be wild guesses and is not scientific at all. Yet, many people believe that human society did go through such an evolution. The next step? Same sex marriage.
"Now, same sex marriage is part of human history."
Same sex unions cannot be called marriages. First of all, there are two different types of same sex unions: gay union and lesbian union. They cannot be the same because gay unions cannot give birth to children without involving a surrogate woman while lesbian unions can, ignoring the immorality of IVF. Here is a dilemma. If we only pass laws sanctioning lesbian marriage, gay couples will cry discrimination. If we pass laws sanctioning same sex marriage, gay couples will enjoy a greater share of advantages over lesbian couples. Thus same sex marriage law is unfair to lesbian couples. The Australians are debating about equality of marriages. This is wrongheaded because part of the reasons of the institution of marriage is to provide for the needs of children. The world needs new human beings. A society needs babies otherwise it will age quickly. Women need babies. It is part of their mother instinct. Men need babies. They need inheritors of their empires.
Heterosexual unions are open to new life and carry greater burden of raising up new human beings. Therefore it is right to provide greater benefits for heterosexual unions. On the other hand, gay unions are sterile and have given up the responsibility of raising new human lives. It is unfair to enjoy benefits while refusing to shoulder responsibilities. I have no authority to stop homosexuals from living together, but don't call it marriage please. Such a union does not deserve the title "marriage".
I will deal with the question of sexual orientation and parenting tomorrow.
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