Catholic weddings and gay marriage

I went to a catholic wedding last weekend. Good times, good times. Anyway, during the service, the priest gave a homily about the meaning of marriage. He said that the essence of marriage, its central, defining component, is the commitment between two people. It isn't just about a feeling, it involves a commitment to be there with and for the other person for the rest of your life. He went on like that for awhile.

Now, this all seemed basically right to me. But it struck me funny, because the catholic church, including I think this particular priest (he was quite conservative), is adamantly opposed to gay marriage. Yet, this definition of marriage seems to me to be one of the main justifications for allowing gay marriage: marriage is about this particular kind of commitment, and so any two people who share this level of commitment, this kind of love, should be allowed to marry. So, it struck me that the catholic church's position on gay marriage, at least as embodied in this priest but I think more generally, is blatantly inconsistent. Limiting marriage to just between a man and a woman is ad hoc: there isn't any principled reason for it that stems from the nature of marriage.

But wait, the priest also mentioned children. He emphasized that one of the important things about marriage is having and raising children. So if marriage is about a certain strong commitment and child-rearing, maybe this could ground a distinction between hetero- and homosexual couples. The former can have kids, the latter cannot. Hopefully, anyone reading this sees the problem here. Some heterosexual couples cannot have kids either. Does this mean they shouldn't be allowed to marry? Of course not. For one thing, both of these groups can adopt. So they can do society the service of providing children a safe and stable environment in which to reach adulthood and become themselves productive members of society.

But let's push a little further. Maybe the bigot can say that heterosexual couples by nature, or in general, can have kids, but homosexual couples can't ever, so that's the difference (ok, a little rhetorical overkill with the use of "bigot," but these people piss me off). My response is that this is just wrong on the facts. Some heterosexual couples produce children by means other than sex, such as in-vitro fertilization. I take it that pretty much no one has a problem with that. Well, homosexual couples can use this method to produce children that are genetically related to at least one of them. So, homosexual couples can produce children too, using a method that isn't intrinsically wrong. Maybe not by having sex with each other, but how is that the limiting factor? Further, I'm positive that, given time, we will develop methods that allow homosexual couples to have children that are genetically related to both parents.

I'm sure there are other silly arguments against gay marriage, and unjustified and ad hoc reasons to limit marriage to a man and a woman. But given the catholic priest's definition of marriage, which again I think is pretty much on target, I'm hard pressed to think of any good ones.