Hernn Iruegas Villarreal A tough thought experiment about marriage 01/10/2012

Formatted: English (U.S.)

The author seems to have a complete idea about marriage. He clearly understands all the implications that it involves. Above all, he establishes that the main characteristics of marriage is its rule that says it has to be open to offspring. Therefore, marriage between gay couples is only acceptable in a world where its definition is changed and where it has another nature. He uses a fictional experiment to explain this argument. The experiment is quite weird, yet it is effective and efficient. The experiment consists on imagining an island where only young men are found. These men have not seen a woman in their lives, they have only observed animals. They have similar celebrations and rituals to ours, but most importantly, they touch each other to generate pleasure. One day, a pair of these men presents present themselves to the entire society as special friends. Their society is overwhelme d to see the great friendship they created. Nevertheless, the friendly couple demands to have privacy, to accumulate resources only for their own, to be loyal to each other until they die, and to have a ceremony initiating their bond (they want help from their society to accomplish these demands). The full of young men society refuses to their demands. Their argument is that the act of sexual pleasure (private as it may be) does not require community recognition. On the other side of the island there is a society of young woman in an equal situation. They have never seen a man and they cause each other pleasure. Likewise, they are full of doubts concerning their bodies and functions. One day, the two societies meet. As a consequence, they see that their bodies are different and the pleasure they get from bonding their bodies is much greater than their past pleasures. However, the only result according to them was obtaining satisfaction.

Nine months later, the now united societies are left astonished by the act they are seeing. A baby was born! Now all the doubts they had about their bodies were answered. They knew what their bodies were made for. Regardless, they focused on the baby. They came to the conclusion that the baby needed protection, nourish, and caring. Likewise, that having sexual relationships between a man and a woman can lead to consequences, which involved the couple and the baby. After the baby was born the society understood that they were improperly using their body parts and had equivocal longings. Similarly, that being in a relationship (man-woman) is of great importance, worthy of a rite, recognition and acceptance from society. This -according to the author- is where we can include the word marriage, at the face of human sexuality, not at the face of sexual attraction. The author explains that a contemporary characterization of marriage look looks as follows: two people with great affection for each other want to accumulate their goods and be loyal to each other, with the obvious acceptance, agreement, and support from society (including a rite). If we scrutinize marriage as explained there is nothing wrong for same sex couples to marry. However, this definition of marriage does not include a big characteristic. That is: children. In other words, if sexual relationships between same sex couples and opposite sex couples would result in the same (obtaining pleasure); no one would ever have come up with the idea of marriage. Therefore, as gay couples cannot produce offspring, they are not using their bodies correctly and their thoughts are mistaken. As a result, marriage is not an option for them from my point view.