Are Men and Women Interchangeable? Or Are We Complimentary?

Logic has almost disappeared from our society replaced with feelings. Lack of logic is obvious in discussions about homosexual marriage. "It's a question of fairness," we're told. "How can we deny to two men the right to marry when a man and woman have that right?" Now how exactly does that make sense. It's like saying, "How can we deny the right of men to conceive and bear children, when women can?" Or "How can we deny the right of women to use urinals when men can?"

Some things cannot be used in some ways because of their natures. You can use a match to light a fire, but you can't screw it into an outlet to light a room.


And what is the institution of marriage? Define it. What is it's purpose? Define it. Traditionally, marriage has been seen, even from a secular point of view, as a significant social institution where a man and a woman out of love publicly commit to one another before the community for the purpose of conceiving, rearing, and educating children. The benefit to the state is a stable unit on which to found a society. Can anyone point to a culture founded on same-sex marriage? There are certainly cultures that tolerated homosexuality, but that's not the same thing. And there is no historical evidence that I'm aware of where homosexual "marriage" was a culture's foundation. In fact, where homosexual relations thrived, cultures disappeared. Look at what happened to Rome when it's early Republic based on the family became increasingly immoral? It rotted from within.

Those who defend same-sex marriage need to follow the logic of their belief. They are saying, in fact, that men and women are completely interchangeable in the family unit. Some people actually posit that two homosexuals or two lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman. What logically follows from that statement is that a man in a homosexual relationship can take the place of a woman in the role of mother. Or a woman in a lesbian relationship can take the place of the father. And it makes no difference. In other words dads and moms don't matter. That's where the arguments in favor of homosexual "marriage" lead.

But is it true?

I was at a family gathering a few days ago. Three young moms were sitting in the living room chatting. Each had a nursing baby on her lap. Not one of the dads came in and volunteered to take his wife's place. Why not? Because dads can't nurse babies. Neither can they conceive a baby or carry the baby in the womb for nine months and deliver the baby. Are those events really irrelevant to the child's growth and development? We know too much about the baby learning in the womb to accept that without ignoring a wealth of data. (See here and here and here.)

And what about the child learning about the opposite sex? Are men and women really identical so there's no need for a child to experience different kinds of attachments and interactions? Is every difference in man and woman a cultural construct? I certainly don't think so. And even if you believe that to be true, you are flying in the face of millennia of experience to engage in a social experiment with a totally unknown outcome.

Men and women are complimentary. Mark Twain portrayed the differences between men and women in his diary of Adam and Eve just as philosophers and popes have done. (See here.) For a child to grow up in an artificial environment where a man is pretending to be a mom or a woman is pretending to be a dad robs the child of a well rounded education in reality. One recent study ignited a firestorm because it showed that children raised in normal families fare better than those raised in same-sex families. It was obviously a politically incorrect outcome. And then there are adult children raised in those environments now sharing the negative impact it had on their development. (See here and here and here.) Other young adults raised in same-sex households express different views, but they are the darlings of the media. There is no risk in saying same-sex parenting is great!

Then there's the civil right argument. Not only is it illogical because it puts on one side of the scale an unchangeable physical characteristic that is clearly visible to the whole world and attempts to balance it on the other side of the scale with a behavioral choice that can easily be hidden. It trivializes the real suffering that blacks experienced in this country. Far from being a persecuted minority, homosexuals are a privileged group. How many football players are called courageous for championing a behavioral choice of fornication with a female?

Same-sex marriage is a popular, politically correct issue based on virtual reality and wishful thinking. No man will ever be a mom. No woman will ever be a dad. And despite the increasing number of "gender identities" there are only two sexes, male and female. That's the way God made things and all the rest is a dream world.