2004-02-15 Homosexual Marriage and Civilization/03

Marrying Is Hard to Do

Men and women, from childhood on, have very different biological and social imperatives. They are naturally disposed to different reproductive strategies; men are (on average) larger and stronger; the relative levels of various hormones, the difference in the rate of maturity, and many other factors make it far, far easier for women to get along with other women and men to get along with men.

Men, after all, know what men like far better than women do; women know how women think and feel far better than men do. But a man and a woman come together as strangers and their natural impulses remain at odds throughout their lives, requiring constant compromise, suppression of natural desires, and an unending effort to learn how to get through the intersexual swamp.

And yet, throughout the history of human society -- even in societies that tolerated relatively open homosexuality at some stages of life -- it was always expected that children would be born into and raised by families consisting of a father and mother.

And in those families where one or both parents were missing, usually because of death, either stepparents, adoptive parents, or society in general would step in to provide, not just nurturing, but also the appropriate role models.

It is a demonstrated tendency -- as well as the private experience of most people -- that when we become parents, we immediately find ourselves acting out most of the behaviors we observed in the parent of our own sex. We have to consciously make an effort to be different from them.

We also expect our spouse to behave, as a parent, in the way we have learned to expect from the experiences we had with our opposite-sex parent -- that's why so many men seem to marry women just like their mother, and so many women to marry men just like their father. It takes conscious effort to break away from this pattern.

So not only are two sexes required in order to conceive children, children also learn their sex-role expectations from the parents in their own family. This is precisely what large segments of the Left would like to see break down. And if it is found to have unpleasant results, they will, as always, insist that the cure is to break down the family even further.