The more I read and hear about this, the more clear it becomes: how have I missed the obvious? Marriage is about procreation, about having children, of course, something same-sex couples can’t do. If I’m reading this correctly, defending marriage means making sure only people who can conform to “nature’s norms” can be married (we’ll leave out the documented instances of same sex relationships in the wild). No one should be allowed to be married unless they already have children, which means they indulged in premarital sex and are therefore unworthy of marriage.
So no one would get a marriage license at all: we’d all get “Learner’s Permits” that are redeemable for the real thing once we demonstrate our procreative prowess. Then we could claim to be married. Childless couples are unraveling the fabric of society by claiming to be married but ignoring the true meaning of it. Older couples who marry for love and companionship? No deal: we may have to devise some special class for them. If they have children from a previous marriage, perhaps that will suffice, but if that marriage ended in divorce, what then? Have they let the side down?
The more I look at it, the less sense it makes. If you take it at face value and work out who can be considered “married” it becomes a reductionist exercise where you may end up with no one . . . . marriage will be some unattainable goal for anyone.