The husband and wife’s resolute commitment to the irreplaceability of each other with respect to their union””their fides””with all its joyous, self-imposed, exacting rigor establishes a moral environment wherein the child has the security of knowing that their identity and personhood has its foundation within the exclusive devotion between just two people. The child’s life and origin begins in the secret, hidden mystery of love between the man and the woman whose shape is made public in their vows of marriage.
To be clear, my point is a moral one and not about biology per se. But what’s true at the moral level is also true biologically: if either member of the union were replaced, the DNA of the child would obviously come from a different pool. To the extent that matters for the determination of a child’s life””and it clearly matters some””that would be enough to indicate that there is something about being begotten from just those two parents and no others that matters to the child’s future….
If my argument is right, gay marriage is not a revolution; it is simply the final stage of the erosion of eros….