Unkatunk

Students "hook up" at Centre College, as they do at most other colleges. The term is deliberately ambiguous, covering all sorts of ill-advised physical intimacy from kissing to intercourse, usually while drunk.

Not all students hook up, though. Recently one of those who does not was describing a conversation among a group of students, in which they started listing all the people each had hooked up with. It became a game to see if they were all linked indirectly in this way. All of them were – except my student (and bully for her, I say).

I passed this on to my brother-in-law. He says this issue arose one day in his Cornell University dormitory, Risley Hall, where they made a giant hook-up map which connected all of the dormitory's residents – save my brother-in-law and his roommate. And bully for them, too. He says this conversation led the Cornell students to create a special term to describe how two people who have hooked up with the same third party are related to one another. The word they came up with is "unkatunk," which, as far as he can recall, was just a nonsense sound that appealed to them. And sure enough, the word appears on UrbanDictionary.com, with this definition:

unkatunk

defines the relationship in which you and someone you know have slept with the same person. kind of a variant on the transitive property of sexual multiplication.

a < -- sex -- > b
b <-- sex -- > c
a < -- unkatunk --> c

orig. Risley Hall, Cornell University

My surveys at Centre revealed that hooking up does not go all the way to intercourse as often as other people think it does. I expect the same is true at Cornell. Nonetheless, if, say, Facebook were to connect all the various hook ups it notes, I would guess that three quarters of the entire national college-going class are within six degrees of unkatunk of one another.

Should You Get Serious About Marriage in College?

A thoughtful woman in my family class posed this question in her journal for me:

In my experience, many of my girlfriends do not want to pursue “anything too serious” during college, in their words, “I am young, I don’t know where I’m going to be next year and I want to keep my options open.” The mutual feelings among college males about their uncertain future, and natural inclination to short-term sexual relationships, creates this liminal space as well. … It seems a career track is problematic for women all around when it comes to marriage and family. Aside from providing extra resources, it works against marriage in general. Although it can be overcome, it seems like the pursuit of a career almost always works as an antagonist to family and the pro-marriage ideas. This is the most frustrating realization I have come to in this course. Have I misconstrued it?

I don't think careers are antagonistic to marriage and family. Indeed, smart women need brain food and challenges, as smart men do. Family is great, but it is not all you will do in a long life. However, delaying marriage in favor of your career throughout your twenties does run a risk of making family impossible.

I would counsel an opposite strategy – you don't want to get too serious about careers now, because who knows what spouses and children the future will bring. Family first, then career, is the more likely strategy to let you "have it all."

New Hope for Second Marriages

My students come to the family class knowing one big scary fact about marriage: 50% of marriages in this country end in divorce. I am therefore always happy to help unpack that idea. The most encouraging fact I can give them in response is that most first marriages endure. Indeed, since they have managed, with only a couple of exceptions, to get beyond their teenage years without kids or marriage, and are likely to graduate from a good college and be employed, the odds for their marriages working out are quite good, indeed.

So how can we have a 50% divorce rate if most first marriages last? Because most second marriages don't, and the odds go down with each new iteration as you approach the Elizabeth Taylor/Jennifer Lopez asymptote. The divorce rate for first marriages is under 50%. The divorce rate for second marriages, though, is over half, closer to 60%.

Recently, though, I have read some good news about second marriages, too. Barry and Emily McCarthy, in Getting It Right This Time, report that second marriages which make it through the first two years successfully have the same divorce rate as first marriages. That is, most second marriages which make it past the first two years will endure.

At the Gruntled Center, we are strongly in favor of first marriages enduring and thriving. But we also believe that it is never too late for a happy ending. For those who are already divorced or in a second marriage, it is cause for celebration that you can get it right the second time. The McCarthys go into detail about how to have a healthy second marriage, and we are definitely all for healthy marriages. A healthy second prevents a sad third, a disastrous fourth, and the death spiral beyond that.

The divorce rate for first marriages is going down, for good reasons and bad. It is now a little below 50%. We may hope that if the opinion leaders of America come back to supporting marriage, we might get that rate below 40% in a decade or so. That would mean fewer people in the position to consider second marriages. But it would also be good to bring down the divorce rate of second marriages. It would be realistic, I think, to aim to get the second marriage divorce rate below 50% in this same coming decade.

How to Have a Traditional First Date

Last night I had a discussion with a number of students about dating. The common complaint of college students, at Centre College and elsewhere, is that it is impossible to date, that there is no structure to courtship. As Elizabeth Marquardt and Norval Glenn demonstrated, between "talking" and "joined at the hip" there are no intermediate steps. So we set out to do something about it. We came up with a rough protocol for a first date.

The first thing that all agreed on is that he has to take the initiative. This puts men in the position of being shot down (again and again). But the basic fact is that ultimately she does the deciding, so the first step in the dance of courtship has to come from him.

Here was the list we came up with from there. He should:

Make it clear that is it a date when he asks.
Ask nicely and confidently.
Give her sufficient time to prepare.
Have a plan.
Show up on time.
Plan something short and fun, which could be extended if things go well.
Offer the chivalrous courtesies – opening doors, waiting for her, etc.
Plan to pay. (This was a little contentious, but the consensus was that he should pay on the first date, even if she offers to share, because he picked the place and the plan.)
At the end of the evening, politely thank one another in words, and no more.

Two things struck me as important about this plan.

First, they were all supportive of the idea of having a standard protocol for a date, to cut through the debilitating ambiguity of the college "hook up/quasi-married" dating life.

Second, almost all of the ideas about what to do and not do on a date where about him. Even when I asked, "what is the woman's role in a date?" nearly all the answers concerned how she should respond to his initiative. The students thought she should be attentive and attractive, and go with the flow.

I think there is a further unsaid action that both of them are doing on a date, but much more so in her head: assessing the other as a potential mate. In this conversation, and in many other studies, men and women turned out to be different in how long a list they had of what they wanted and didn't want in a potential mate, and how early and automatically they applied it. Women are not passive on a date: they are constantly assessing. Indeed, most of the women will go directly from the date to a post-mortem assessment with their girlfriends. The men, on the other hand, are less likely to go in their minds all the way from first date to first child, much less rehash it with the guys later.

I think there is a crying need for some structures to courtship in college life. My hope is that discussions like this one can help start that revolution, which comes from the bottom up, from the students themselves. It is too late for in loco parentis at campuses like mine. But it is not too late for grownups to help young people pick their mates with more structure and deliberation.

I would very much welcome your comments and suggestions.

At-Home Mother vs. Housewife

Caitlin Flanagan, in her new book To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing our Inner Housewife, makes a useful distinction. She is not a housewife, but an at-home mother. The difference is that a "housewife," defined herself "primarily through her relationship to her house and her husband," while "an at-home mother feels little obligation to the house itself." This distinction is especially valuable for women who are wives and mothers, like their own mothers, but unlike their own mothers, have full-time careers even when their children are small.

I am grateful that, among the many forms of compatibility that my wife and I share, we have about an equal tolerance for clutter. We have had to adjust to one another's quirks in that regard – the symbol of which is that one side of our bed gets made each morning, but not the other. And we have hugely increased our mess threshold with each child. We have hopes that that will get better when everyone is grown.

As I think about this distinction, neither of us was an at-home spouse for very long, but both of us have seen our primary family obligations to be to the people – spouse and kids – and not to the house. We are blessed with a goodly place, but only essential work will get done on it until the last tuition is paid.

At-home mother is a workable status. A clean house is gravy.

Second Generation Polygamy Raises Girls to be Child Brides

The ongoing trial of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect that has been practicing polygamy for decades, shows what happens after polygamy gets established. The patriarchs of these extended clans raise girls for the purpose of giving them as teenage brides to other polygamist patriarchs. The girls are told it is their religious obligation to marry whoever their father picks, and be a dutiful wife and mother to him. Period.

Proponents of polygamy, like the ACLU, are imagining adults who are free to choose whatever domestic arrangement they like. First generation polygamy might even work that way. But after that, girls become a trading asset, passed from one polygamous clan to another. Even the young woman who testified in the trial, who was told by her father when she was 16 that he was marrying her off to "some Barlow boy" (he couldn't remember the name) the next day, was reluctant to testify. When asked to explain why to the mystified jurors, she said, "We were taught that we would go to hell" for speaking out. "After I got away from that religion, I still felt like I would be damned if I 'spoke out' because that's just how I was raised."

If ever there should be a feminist issue, fighting polygamy should be at the top of the list.

The "Wicked" Gospel of Judas

I went to see the musical "Wicked" last week with my daughters and one of their friends. It tells the backstory of the Oz witches, the good one and the wicked ones. I will not be spoiling the story to say that the title character turns out not to be so wicked, but misunderstood. She is the only one who understands the true nature of the magic of Oz and its wizard.

There has been a bit of a flap recently about the "Gospel of Judas," an ancient Gnostic text recently translated and made available to the public. It tells the backstory of Jesus' apostles, the good ones and the wicked one. I will not be spoiling the story to say that the title character turns out not to be so wicked, but misunderstood. He is the only one who understands the true nature of the gospel of Jesus and His God.

Both seem to me to be interesting explorations of possible alternative pasts. Neither is likely to shake my understanding of the nature of reality. Nor is either text likely to convince me of the intellectual's favorite fantasy – that the universe has a secret at its heart that only special people can know and understand.

And "Wicked" has better songs.

"Wicked" is Great With Teenagers

I took my two teenage daughters and one of their friends to Chicago this week to see "Wicked." This was fun in itself. The show, which concerns the early days of the good and wicked witches of Oz, is fine, and the production was well done.

I had an additional pleasure, though, in traveling with these young ladies. Having three teenage girls loudly and happily singing "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" and the rest of the soundtrack while wizzing (so to speak) through Indiana is a wonderful domestic pleasure.

They also make a great captive audience for puns; they groan so well.

Meth is Worse for Families

Today family therapist Kathy Miles talked to my family class about recent social problems that affect families. I knew that Kentucky, and other rural states, had a significant problem with methamphetamines. Every week has stories of a meth lab being busted in the small towns around here.

Miles told us that meth is worse than other drugs for families because the binges last longer – days instead of hours. When police raid a meth lab, they take a social worker with them, because they are likely to find kids who have been completely neglected for days. A common horrifying detail of these arrests are of the five year old who has been trying to take care of herself – and feed and change a baby. Miles said that all foster placements in eastern Kentucky are full, in part because the meth lab kids urgently need to be removed from their homes.

Every drug takes a toll on families, but this one seems particularly painful. It will be better for us all when this particular fad is over.

One-Flesh Union of Complementary Persons

So, what was the upshot of my couple of weeks with The Meaning of Marriage?

I have been convinced that the marriage makes two people one flesh. I pretty much thought that before, but taking this as a secure foundation for thinking about marriage – independent of whatever the state calls "marriage" – is a great help.

I also already thought that men and women are complementary as a group, though any particular couple works this out in a unique way.

Putting these together, marriage is a one-flesh union of complementary persons, prior to politics.

Right now, I don't really see how you could do that with more than one other person. I will keep thinking about it.


[This one is short and late in the day because I had a wonderful, family-building trip with my daughters to the big city to see "Wicked." A good time was had by all.]

Contraception and Abortion Create More Poor, Fatherless Kids

Sociologist Brad Wilcox, in his Meaning of Marriage essay, reviews the high hopes that some had in the 1960s and '70s that the Pill and easy abortion would mean that every child would be born into a secure home. If it was so easy to prevent births that the parents were not prepared for, this reasoning went, then responsible parents would only have children when they were married and financially ready.

It turns out, though, that there are lots of irresponsible parents. In facts, there are plenty of guys willing to make babies, then leave it up to the mother to decide to have all the children she wanted. After all, it was her choice. Contraception and abortion, and the culture of choice that came with them, shifted the balance in a relationship from the women who wanted to marry and raise kids with their husbands, to the men who might or might not follow through in marrying their pregnant girlfriends and raising the children they made.

The problem of fatherless children affects all classes, but is most common, and hurts the worst, among the poor. In fact, having children without husbands is the main way that women get and stay poor.

When responsible people free themselves from rules that would force them to act responsibly, they feel freer – and do the right thing anyway. However, the unintended consequence of removing the rules and restraints is that other people feel free, too – but often don't do the right thing anyway. Leaving the responsible people to help pick up the pieces.

"Naked, Fragile, Unenforceable Agreement"

That is what Katherine Shaw Spaht says marriage is fast becoming under the law. The law, she says in The Meaning of Marriage, is rapidly retreating from its traditional defense of marriage, to instead making it just another private agreement. The three traditional elements of the legal understanding of marriage – permanence, mutual fidelity, and sexual complementarity – are all being eroded, dropped, even treated as mere prejudice.

Spaht's solution was to help draft the covenant marriage law in Louisiana. This is a second category of legal marriage, more demanding than the usual civil contract, that couples may voluntarily choose. It requires more time and preparation going in to marriage, and, if necessary, getting out. It establishes in law higher standards of marriage, especially if children are involved. Ironically, it does so through the mechanism of a contract (despite the covenant language). Spaht is trying to turn the very tools that have been undermining marriage to marriage's defense. I honor the project of covenant marriage, and note that it has been hugely successful – among the five percent or so of Louisiana marriages which use it.

I do not think things are as far gone as Spaht does. Marriage is a much stronger institution in our culture than it is in our law. And marriage could not survive without cultural support, no matter what the law said. But she is surely right that the law's rapid retreat from marriage threatens to undermine cultural support in the medium run.

To stem that tide we need a strong defense of marriage in law as a permanent, mutually faithful, and sexually complementary relation. Which is what we are talking about in this blog every day.

Marriages Have Privacy Because Marriage is Public

Katherine Shaw Spaht, in her Meaning of Marriage essay on how law has been abandoning marriage, cites an important step down the slippery slope in one of Justice Thurgood Marshall's opinions. In the 1978 case Zablocki v. Redhail, Justice Marshall wrote, "it would make little sense to recognize a right of privacy with respect to other matters of family life and not with respect to the decision to enter the relationship that is the foundation of the family in our society" – the decision to marry. I normally agree with Justice Marshall, but in this instance I think he is exactly wrong.

Marriage transforms individuals and society because it is a public vow. We recognize marriage as a status apart from all others, as making two persons into one flesh, because it is a public promise by the couple and by society. That vow carries with it many grave responsibilities, most importantly to raise any children that the marriage might produce. Raising children well is a grave public duty.

We accept the privacy of what goes on in families more than in any other institution. Family privacy is not absolute; other institutions will intervene if family members are beating one another. But we grant the most leeway and place the most trust in families to do in private what they want because we believe that, ultimately and in the main, that private freedom will most enhance the public good.

Society has a great interest in marriage as a public act and public status because marriage is a shield behind which people have privacy. If the state treats marriage as just another private choice that individuals might make, society loses the public benefit of marriage, and marriages lose the trust that allows society to respect their privacy.

Will Republicans Ever Deliver to "Family Voters?"

The Reagan coalition was an "alliance of opposites" which joined the traditional big business base of the Republican Party with social libertarians and religious conservatives, all of whom wanted "smaller government." The conflict between the libertarians and the Christian conservatives was always the most obvious fault line in the party. The alliance, though, was enough to put Reagan and Bush I in office, and sweep the Republicans to power in Congress. Of the three legs of the Reagan Republican stool, big business, and the rich people who run them, got the most, libertarians got something, and family values conservatives got not much. Some defended the conservative credentials of the party, though, for achieving what could be done over Democratic and "liberal elite" opposition.

The second time around, the current President Bush held together that coalition. Republicans expanded their control of government, and have been in power long enough to effectively control the judiciary, too. Unlike his two Republican predecessors, George W. Bush really is an evangelical Christian from a red state. He has talked the talk for a long time, and now has the political muscle to make it so.

So, what have family values voters gotten for their quarter century of loyal support of the Republican Party? Almost nothing. Whenever there is a conflict between business interests and traditional family interests (as there is on almost every issue), the governing party has sided with business.

This is not just my conclusion. Lately, some heavy hitters among conservative Christian Republicans have been critical of the Bush administration on exactly these grounds. Alan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Religion, Family, and Society, said "when the interests of big business and the interests of average families collide, the GOP almost always gives way to the interests of big business." Even more significant are the criticisms from Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, the research arm of Focus on the Family. He notes that "When you look at what the [presidential] discussion has been since 2004, marriage has been absent from the vocabulary."

One of the great achievements of both parties in the 1970s was to mobilize evangelicals to vote at all. In 1976, the "year of the evangelical," previously apolitical evangelical voters turned out for born-again Democrat Jimmy Carter to throw the Watergate rascals out. Four years later, evangelicals moved to their more natural home, the family-values-talking Republicans under Reagan.

It is hard to imagine evangelicals as a group deciding the reject all worldly politics. But it is easy to imagine a continuing erosion of evangelical voting, as they conclude that the Democrats are too opposed to their family values, and the Republicans, though they talk a good game, are too wedded to mammon to deliver for God. If Republicans won't actually produce traditional family laws under George W. Bush plus majorities in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, they probably never will.

Simulated Authenticity on Beale Street

I am in Memphis for a workshop, staying a block from Beale Street. There are crowds and music and lots of "Big Ass Cups of Beer." But Beale Street is no longer a commercial part of black Memphis, a vibrant row of honkytonks playing popular music. It is now a cleaned up, safe, three-block theme park which pays homage to black popular music and life of two generations ago. The clubs are named for B.B. King and W.C. Handy and, somewhat incongruously, Elvis Presley and Isaac Hayes. But the music is fossilized, or regular white rock of today. It is not bad, it is just bourgeoisified.

A symbol of what Beale Street is now is that one block south, looming over the backs of the blues clubs, is the new FedEx Forum, Memphis' downtown domed arena. FedEx and Beale Street represent different eras of culture, commerce, and race relations. Now, through the genius of capitalism (which I praise and do not slight), both are brought together to provide seemingly dangerous, but actually safe and clean, entertainment.

I think I may go to the Starbucks, which is not a simulated anything, but a genuine Starbucks.

"Gay Parent" Research Full of Holes

Maggie Gallagher's Meaning of Marriage essay points out that in all but one of the subfields of research on parenting, there is a growing scholarly consensus that kids benefit most when they are raised by their own married father and mother. The one genre of parenting research that says otherwise is the research on homosexual parents.

The big claim made about the homosexual parenting research is that kids do just fine when raised by homosexual parents and same-sex couples. However, Gallagher cites Steven Nock's comprehensive review of the literature, which concludes that "all of the articles I reviewed contained at least one fatal flaw of design or execution."

One big hole in the whole body of gay parenting studies is that none (or maybe one) uses a nationally representative sample – a norm in family studies otherwise. Another big hole is that most of the gay parenting studies have been done by psychologists looking at gender identity and self esteem – important questions, but not like the range of economic, medical, academic, criminal, attitudinal, and behavioral measures that social science routinely asks about families. The psychological studies have found that children of homosexual parents are no more likely to be homosexual themselves than are other kids. It is a long way from that finding, though, to a conclusion that children of homosexual parents are no different from other kids across the board.

Lately, the major policy concern has been about same-sex marriage. The "no difference in the kids" claim has been applied to this debate, too. Yet one of Nock's important findings was that the vast majority of the studies of homosexual parents have been about lesbian single mothers. It is not so surprising that the children of homosexual single mothers are not that different from the children of heterosexual single mothers. But that is a long way from showing that the children of same-sex couples turn out the same as the children of their own married parents.

Gallagher can not answer the big question – do children of same-sex couples turn out the same as children of their married parents? – because there is almost no research on same-sex couples raising kids over time. And obviously, since the possibility of same-sex marriage has only existed for a few years anywhere, there is no research on the effect of same-sex married couples on their kids.

Gallagher expects that when such research is done, children of their own married parents will still do better. She thinks this because two biological parents still invest more in their own kids than one parent and a step-parent. Moreover, men and women, as a rule, are different, and children generally benefit from having both kinds of parents. Those lesbians couples which have done the best in raising boys, which I wrote about earlier, went out of their way to involve men as role models in their sons' lives.

Few researchers expect that same-sex couples will turn out to be bad parents. But it is very premature to conclude that their kids turn out the same in all respects as children of married parents.

Faith Through Marriage

Seana Sugrue, in the Meaning of Marriage essay that I wrote about yesterday, also makes this interesting claim:

"the tenets of religious faith are primarily transmitted through conjugal society."

She brings this up to further her argument that if marriage comes to be defined and controlled by the state, not only will the family lose freedom, but religion will be undermined, too.

What interests me today, though, is the claim itself that faith is primarily transmitted through the family. I can see this for the rich way of life that is Catholicism, which Sugrue, an Ave Maria University professor, represents. I can see it being doubly true for Judaism. Islam works pretty well as a family-taught faith. And all the Eastern religions, as everyday religious practices, are primarily taught in families, since they are not really congregational religions at all.

The exception is Protestantism. Over time, all Protestant denominations tend to become family traditions. The everyday practice of the faith at home makes a huge difference in what the children will actually do and believe. And the family that prays together is more likely to stay together. But the more sectarian the Prots, the more the faith is transmitted in the church (or parachurch). Faiths which are based on adult converts are not primarily transmitted in conjugal society – not to the adults, and not very successfully to their children.

Now, this may be a weakness of Protestantism – something that some Catholics I know have always suspected about the "sects." On the other hand, Protestantism made the modern world, and fits into the modern world so well, because it is at heart an individually chosen or re-chosen faith. The priesthood of all believers undermines the religious significance of the family just as state control of marriage does. This creates a sociological weakness for Protestant culture, which is always in danger of dying off when it stops evangelizing. But the priesthood of all believers – not of all marriages of believers, or of all families of believers – is at the heart of the culture-shaping power of Protestantism to change lives.

Marriage is Not a Creation of the State (and We Should Keep it That Way)

Political scientist Seana Sugrue, in The Meaning of Marriage, starts with the ancient view that the family is pre-political. Marriage and childrearing are not creations of the state, but precede it. Marriage is not a contract created by the market, but precedes it. Having children, she argues, raises marriage above any possibility of being a mere contract to a sacred duty.

Sugrue has this wonderful sentence: "the sexual revolution is to the family what communism is to the market." In the case of the sexual revolution, the state was employed to dismantle the family in the name of greater individual control. Communism, on the other hand, used the state to dismantle the market in the name of greater social control. Both cases, though, ended up making the state more powerful over the institution it was "reforming." The sexual revolution did not just liberate individuals from the family – it left the state in control of defining the family.

Which is why Sugrue argues that establishing legal same-sex marriage would diminish liberty.

The Law is a Teacher

Yesterday I considered Robby George's argument that marriage is a unitive act of complementary persons. I agree with him. Other strategic minorities in industrial societies do not agree with him. They want the state to extend the definition of marriage to same-sex couples, and beyond that, to any close relation, whether it joins the same kind of persons, or could produce children, or is meant to be permanent, or has any limits on how many can play.

Given this deep disagreement about the nature of marriage, some reach for the sectarian solution – the state can call anything it wants a "marriage," but as for me and my house, we will stick with the traditional understanding. And the devil take the hindmost in the culture.

Churches, in contrast to sects, do not and cannot take that approach. George is a Roman Catholic, of the churchiest of churches. They know, as George writes in the essay in question, "the law is a teacher." Committed conservatives will stick to traditional marriage no matter what the law allows. Committed liberals will allow and experiment with every possible combination that nature and custom make possible. For the majority in the middle, though, what the law supports and allows does instruct our sense of right and wrong.

The Presbyterian Church is a middle polity, halfway between the centralized, authoritative, state-coordinated church, and the go-our-own-way, the-state-should-leave-us-alone sect. In this country, Presbyterian and Reformed churches have always supported the separation of church and state.

So what is a middle, Presbyterian position on marriage?

First, the church and state should agree on a minimal definition of marriage.

Second, the state should preserve citizens' freedom as much as it can without threatening social order. This means the state can prefer a good form of marriage, while allowing a good-enough form of union. As I have argued before, the social distinction between the good and the good enough is crucial to centrist thought.

Third, the church promotes marriage as the permanent union of one man and one woman in a mutually supportive life that is open to children. That is the best kind of marriage. Not everyone is called to marriage, but all can make a marriage of this kind if they are called to marry.

Fourth, the church supports the state in creating other kinds of civil unions which allow everyone to have someone they can legally bind to for support.

The law is a teacher. It should teach the kind of marriage that is best for society and for most citizens. But the law is also generous, and should tolerate other options if they do not threaten public order.

And that, pretty much, is the position of the Presbyterian Church (USA) today.

Marriage as a Unitive Act of Complementary Persons

We come now to the essay in The Meaning of Marriage of Robert George, co-editor of the book and one of the heavy hitters of Catholic natural law thinking today.

His argument is that men and women are complementary.
Marriage is a unitive act – an act that unites these two complementary persons, making two people into one flesh.
Marriage is a human good even if children do not result, but the act of marriage aims at procreation.
SO acts which unite people who are not complementary types and which could not be procreative are not marriages, whatever else they might be.

George, and Catholic natural law thinkers in general, would make an argument like this even if alternative theories of marriage were not on the table. Since, however, arguments for homosexual marriage are at issue now, he has to argue for an understanding of marriage that includes sterile men and women, but excludes same-sex couples.

The key claim for including sterile couples is that the marital act is "reproductive in type," even though "some other conditions in the agents may prevent procreation from occurring."

The key claim for excluding same-sex couples is that men and women are complementary types of persons, in a way that two men or two women are not.

I strongly believe that men and women as types of persons are designed to be complementary (those of delicate Darwinian sensibilities may substitute "have evolved" for "are designed").

I very much like the formulation that marriage makes two persons one flesh, and that the law does not make people married, but can only recognize one-flesh unions which have been made by other hands.

I do think that the aim, point, intent, designed purpose, and telos of marriage is children. Couples who cannot have children, but are open to them, are really married.

The place at which my Calvinist understanding balks is at the phrase "acts which are reproductive in type." This seems to me to be, to use an old Prot insult, Jesuitical casuistry – a too-neat distinction designed to get to a pre-ordained conclusion.

BUT I don't know what the right alternative is.

I have not written much about same-sex marriage, the issue of the day, because I am stuck on this point.

I would welcome your edifying responses.