“The view typically (if often unconsciously) held by advocates of same sex marriage is that the person is the conscious and desiring aspect of the self. The person inhabits (or is somehow associated with) a body, certainly, but the body is regarded (if often only implicitly) as a subpersonal reality, rather than a part of the personal reality of the human being whose body it is. The body is viewed as an instrument by which the individual produces or otherwise participates in satisfactions and other desirable experiences and realizes various goals.

This is a dualistic understanding of the human person.  It is a cognitive vs sensate dualism.  Personal unity is not attained bodily, but rather persons instead unite emotionally (or, some might even say, spiritually). And, of course, if this is true, then persons of the same sex can unite and share sexual experiences together that they suppose will enhance their personal union by enabling them to express affection, share pleasure, and feel more intensely through their sex play.

The historic law of marriage that is central to Western thought is different.

“[H]uman beings are bodily persons, not consciousnesses, or minds, or spirits inhabiting and using nonpersonal bodies. A human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Far from being a mere instrument of the person, the body is intrinsically part of the personal reality of the human being. Bodily union is thus personal union, and comprehensive personal union—marital union—is founded on bodily union.  Simply put, the person is a body/soul union.

Marriage is a covenant/contract/ union of a man and a woman to maintain a relationship that is unitive and procreative.  Marriage unites or bonds a man and woman in the intimate and life giving relationship that leads to procreation.  The man and the woman give of themselves completely to each other as if they are a gift to each other.  This gift of self is a gift of the entire person, which includes body and soul, or mind and body.  Fertility, which is an inherent good of the person and thus not a disease, is intrinsic to this giving of oneself to the other.  In this is family created, and it takes a family to make a village.  Life happens.  Mothers and fathers create children who are nourished, educated and raised in families and become parents themselves and exist within the family of cousins, uncles and aunts, and grandparents.  This is life. We become a people with a shared history over time and with a common stake in that history. Only the heterosexual norm gives full expression to the commitment to time and history evident in having and caring for children.

Complementarity of man and woman.  Marriage is a universal human social institution.  The government, or the state, did not create marriage.  Marriage is older than the Bible, the Koran, and the US Constitution.  Marriage’s deepest roots are in human nature and human experience.  A man or woman is able to breath, eat, drink, and think on their own.  But, it is only in the natural complementarity of man and woman that they can realize their full potential.  In the procreative, or generative, order each person needs the opposite sex for completion. The homosexual genital sexual act, once known as sodomy, does not complement and can never bring that completion. In the creative complementarity of male and female we are directed toward community with those unlike us. In the community between male and female, we do not and cannot see in each other mere reflections of ourselves.  In this sense, it is less likely to be narcissistic in a heterosexual relationship. 

Completeness of family:  Naturally arising from complentarity, a child has the right to be raised in a family that has a mother and father, which offers the completeness of humanity. Two dads never equal a mom, nor vice versa. Therefore, a same-sex marriage is an incomplete human existence for the couple. The child will be incomplete as not having mother and father.  Single mothers or fathers know that there is a loss or absence in their family.  A mother knows that she does not have a father for her child.

Human society requires the direction and restraint of many impulses. Few of those impulses are more powerful or unpredictable than sexual desire. Throughout history societies have taken particular care to socialize sexuality toward marriage and the family. Marriage is a place where, in a singular manner, our waywardness begins to be healed and our fear of commitment
overcome, where we may learn to place another person's needs rather than our own desires at the center of life.

We know that there is an order to nature.  We understand life in the via positiva.   Marine biology, limnology, and the various studies of ecosystems reveal to us that there is a delicate balance to nature.  If something is altered artificially then there will be negative reactions within that particular ecosystem, perhaps even to the entire planet.   This is evident in Amazon rain forests, trout streams in the Pacific Northwest, or the small ponds around Kansas that are close to the enormous poultry and hog farms.   Now, look at the ratio of males to females.  It is roughly 50% of each, perhaps 51% males to 49% females.  There is a reason for this.  The law of numbers does not lie.  If we tamper with nature with intended sterility of marriage, same-sex marriage, and abortion, then nature is unsettled and taken from order.  We could say, nature backfires. 

The primary pillar of human society is the family comprised of man and woman and child.  If we alter this pillar we will negatively affect society.  We cannot attack the integrity of nature, without creating problems.  It is troubling to think of government trying to redefine or change nature through legislation. 

Subsidize the union. To have same-sex marriage it will take radical invasiveness by the government.  There will need to be increased subsidization of a sanctioned lifestyle that cannot create its own family.  This will be expensive.  In the name of compassion (pity) that reaches beyond mere tolerance of homosexual lifestyles, various members of the legislature and the now acting president desire to fully embrace and affirm actions that cannot sustain society. 

It is sociologically incoherent to imagine that we can both radically redefine marriage and transfer its transcendent, cultural and social significance to same-sex couples, as if the former does not alter and undermine the latter.  The government will need to legally ensure that homosexuals can adopt children as the homosexual will not procreate.  The homosexual couple is not able to bring stability to society or sustain society through progeny. 

If the theory of evolution says that all human persons, indeed all organic life forms, are constantly evolving not just biologically but also physiologically; then, given the need for the propagation of the species through reproduction of those who are most fit; then; what role do same-sex unions have in the evolutionary process which guarantees the survival, thus procreative reality, of the fittest?

In the ancient world of Greece and Rome, a favorite field of sociological study for homosexuals, marriage was always understood as that of a man and woman.  Because that is how you have a society—a man and woman having a baby.  Furthermore, in the world outside of Judeo-Christian thinking, sex was simply a matter of the dominator and the dominated.  It is the Torah and the Gospel of Jesus Christ which brings compassion and a deeper level of friendship within the union of one man and one woman. 

We understand the world in the via positiva.  The world speaks of the goodness of creation and order.  Yet, there is tragedy and bad things in the world.  Men are imperfect.  Sin happens.  Mankind has tried innumerable times to order and structure society so as to have civilization.  Jewish people were the anomaly within the world that they dwelled.  They were set apart.  They said no to human sacrifice, sodomy, temple prostitution, and the polytheism that supported these actions.  Jesus Christ did not come to liberate his people and all humans from the sexual mores of the Torah.  The woman caught in the act of adultery, John 8, shows the mercy of God as the answer to sin and not the condoning of the act of adultery.   It is impossible for Jews and Christians to hold to their religious beliefs, substantiated on being people of the Torah and/or the Gospels and letters of St. Paul, while at the same time denying the teachings found in those works.  A man or woman cannot be a Christian and deny the Torah, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6: 9 and the proclamations of Christ Jesus on the union of marriage being that of a man and woman.