Can only opposite-sex couples achieve a real marriage? In their article, What is Marriage?, Robert George et. al argue that same-sex couples cannot achieve a real marriage. Here I rebut their conclusion, and show: The authors' reasoning includes, rather than excludes, same-sex couples The authors' reasoning leads to the untenable conclusion that a woman with vaginal cancer who has a vaginectomy should be barred from receiving a marriage certificate. The authors rely on a flawed understanding of natural selection, the process that evolved sex in the first place. You can watch the narrated powerpoint here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfYqQe-VnHU) and read my 30 page paper here (http://www.scribd.com/doc/69140224).

1. And They Shall Be One Flesh: Why Robert
George’s What is Marriage? Falters
By Brad Carmack

2. Outline
1. Summarize What is Marriage?
2. Understanding reproduction
3. Teleology of sex
4. Conclusions

3. Outline
1. Summarize What is Marriage?
2. Understanding reproduction
3. Teleology of sex
4. Conclusions

4. Audience awareness
Have heard of Robert George?
Have read at least part of What is Marriage?

5. What is Marriage?
Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Winter 2010

6. Main points of What is Marriage?
“Marriage is the union of a man and a
woman who make a permanent and
exclusive commitment to each other of the
type that is naturally (inherently) fulfilled by
bearing and rearing children together. The
spouses seal (consummate) and renew their
union by conjugal acts—acts that constitute
the behavioral part of the process of
reproduction, thus uniting them as a
reproductive unit.”

7. Main points of What is Marriage?
- Infertile heterosexual
couples can achieve real marriage if
they have vaginal intercourse
- Same-sex couples cannot achieve
real marriage, since vaginal intercourse
is impossible

8. Outline
1. Summarize What is Marriage?
2. Understanding reproduction
3. Teleology of sex
4. Conclusions

9. Reproduction
”Marriage is a comprehensive union of two
sexually complementary persons”
-Complementary structures? (e.g. penis and
vagina)
-How about complementary sexual
orientations? (towards men and towards
women)

10. Sexual complementarity?
The protruding shape indicates the biological
sex of the individual.

11. Sexual complementarity?
The intruding shape indicates the sexual
orientation of the individual (towards men or
towards women). This is a straight male.

12. Sexual complementarity?
Genitals = Orientation
- Sexual orientation and genital structure
are equally determined by biology, and
even share some of the same pathway.
- The two merely have different anatomical
locations (brain v. ventral inferior
abdomen)

13. Heterosexual couple
Each partner is sexually oriented toward the
biological sex of the other.

14. Homosexual male couple
Each partner is sexually oriented toward the
biological sex of the other.

15. Since each partner is oriented toward the
other, homosexual couples are as sexually
complementary as heterosexual couples

16. Bottom line
Rather than excluding same-sex couples,
the authors’ reasoning can be used to
include them

17. Outline
1. Summarize What is Marriage?
2. Understanding reproduction
3. Teleology of sex
4. Conclusions

18. Reproduction
”The spouses seal (consummate) and renew
their union by conjugal acts—acts that
constitute the behavioral part of the process
of reproduction, thus uniting them as a
reproductive unit.”
-Male ejaculation is the only behavioral part
of the procreative process- no female
participation is needed (witness rape).

19. Vaginal intercourse makes the marriage
Why would vaginal intercourse trump
consent or commitment as the hallmark of
marital sex? Does oral/anal/vaginal or
otherwise really matter?
Can’t a male-male couple complete a
conjugal act by stimulating one or both of
them to orgasm, ejaculation being the only
behavioral element needed in the
procreative process?

20. Vaginal intercourse makes the marriage
What about a couple where
the husband lost a penis in a
work accident- can theirs be a
real marriage?
Should a couple where the
woman has no vagina (say,
she had a vaginectomy as a
cancer treatment) be denied a
marriage license, so that the
state can teach the “moral
truth about marriage”?

21. Vaginal intercourse makes the marriage
Not all men can have vaginal intercourse;
neither can all women.
Until we are prepared to deny marriage to
those incapable of coitus, it is inconsistent
to deny same-sex marriage on the basis of
inability to achieve vaginal intercourse.
“Natural dynamism” toward procreation
turns on fertility, not number of genders

22. Outline
1. Summarize What is Marriage?
2. Understanding reproduction
3. Teleology of sex
4. Conclusions

23. Did you know?
A cheek swab taken from a human male
contains all the genetic instructions needed
to manufacture a human egg.

24. Same-sex couples can
reproduce
 Like infertile heterosexual couples,
lesbian and gay couples have
between them all the genetic
instructions needed to procreate.
This mouse has two and
only two parents: two male
mice.

25. Outline
1. Summarize What is Marriage?
2. Understanding reproduction
3. Teleology of sex
4. Conclusions

26. The Darwin is in the details
“Individual adults are naturally
incomplete with respect to one biological
function: sexual reproduction… their
bodies become, in a strong sense, one…
coordinating for the biological good of the
whole.”

27. The Darwin is in the details
“They perform the first step of the
complex reproductive process.”
• Natural selection evolved sexual organs
and sexual intercourse.
• Natural selection operates at the level of
the gene, not the couple.
• Sex is not the first step- DNA replication
is.

28. The Darwin is in the details
A male virgin, David, dies in
battle at age 25, having first
slain three opponents.
David’s act favors the genes in
his tribe over the enemy tribe
without David reproducing.
• Sexual reproduction is
merely one of many useful
Darwinian strategies
employed by “selfish” genes

29. The Darwin is in the details
“In this case, the whole is made up of the
man and woman as a couple, and the
biological good of that whole is their
reproduction.”
Humans don’t replicate in a Darwinian sense-
genes do (witness how different your father is
from you). A male-female pair is a
subordinate unit of selection; thus,
reproduction benefits the sovereign gene,
rather than the couple (witness how quickly
the couple dies, while the genes persist).

30. The Darwin is in the details
Other possible “purposes” of sex:
-Pleasure (occurs much
more often than
conception, and can
be evolutionarily useful)
- Pair bonding (also occurs much more
often than conception, and can be
evolutionarily useful, witness parenting)

31. The Darwin is in the details
Fingers used for grasping fruit and
branches today may be used for
strumming cellos and painting
masterpieces tomorrow.
Vaginal intercourse could entirely
lose its connection to sexual
reproduction. Natural selection
makes no necessary connection
between function and behavior.

32. Bottom line
Either no purpose can be attached to
vaginal intercourse, since it evolved from
an undirected, continuing process which
may entirely abandon that “purpose”
later;
OR it is not clear that the purpose of
vaginal intercourse is procreation, since
pair bonding and pleasure are likely
competitors.

33. Outline
1. Summarize What is Marriage?
2. Understanding reproduction
3. Teleology of sex
4. Conclusions

34. Conclusions
 The authors’ reasoning fails to exclude
same-sex couples while including
infertile opposite-sex couples
 The authors’ reasoning relies on a
flawed understanding of Darwinian
selection, which evolved sex in the
first place.

35. Conclusion
 “Why, in other words, should we
legally recognize an infertile same-sex
marriage? … the effort to determine
fertility vagina/penis function would
require unjust invasions of privacy….

36. Conclusion
 “even an obviously infertile same-sex
couple—no less than childless newlyweds or
parents of grown children—can live out the
features and norms of real marriage and
thereby contribute to a healthy marriage
culture.

37. Exhortations
 Read my paper, And They Shall Be
One Flesh: Why Robert George’s What
is Marriage? Falters
 Email me at
bradleycarmack@gmail.com

38. The end
 Short version follows: use if in a time
bind

39. Short Version
 1) Vaginal intercourse?
 2) Sexual complementarity?
 3) Reproduction: genes or

40. Short Version
 1) Vaginal intercourse?
 2) Sexual complementarity?
 3) Reproduction: genes or individuals?

41. Main points of What is Marriage?
- Infertile heterosexual
couples can achieve real marriage if
they have vaginal intercourse
- Same-sex couples cannot achieve
real marriage, since vaginal intercourse
is impossible

42. Jeffrey Jessica Marcus Jessica
Marriage No marriage
Jeffrey lost his penis in a work
accident; Marcus did not.

43. Raise of hands-
can they marry?
Marcus Jessica
No marriage
Jeffrey lost his penis in a work
accident; Marcus did not.

44. Raise of hands-
can they marry?
Jeffrey Jessica
Jeffrey lost his penis in a work
accident; Marcus did not.

45. Jeffrey Jessica Marcus Jessica
Marriage No marriage
Case closed.

46. Short Version
 1) Vaginal intercourse?
 2) Sexual complementarity?
 3) Reproduction: genes or individuals?

47. Sexual complementarity
”Marriage is a comprehensive union of two
sexually complementary persons”
-Complementary structures? (e.g. penis and
vagina)
-How about complementary sexual
orientations? (towards men and towards
women)

48. Since each partner is oriented toward the
other, homosexual couples are as sexually
complementary as heterosexual couples

49. Short Version
 1) Vaginal intercourse?
 2) Sexual complementarity?
 3) Reproduction: genes or individuals?

50. The Darwin is in the details
A male virgin, David, dies in
battle at age 25, having first
slain three opponents.
David’s act favors the genes in
his tribe over the enemy tribe
without David reproducing.
• Sexual reproduction is
merely one of many useful
Darwinian strategies
employed by “selfish” genes

51. The Darwin is in the details
People don’t reproduce: genes
do.
Same-sex couples, like
opposite-sex ones, can unite
through sexual activity

52. Conclusion
 “Why, in other words, should we
legally recognize an infertile same-sex
marriage? … the effort to determine
fertility vagina/penis function would
require unjust invasions of privacy….

53. Conclusion
 “even an obviously infertile same-sex
couple—no less than childless newlyweds or
parents of grown children—can live out the
features and norms of real marriage and
thereby contribute to a healthy marriage
culture. They can set a good example for
others and help to teach the next
generation what marriage is and is not. And
as we have argued and will argue, everyone
benefits from a healthy marriage culture..