Redeem the Rainbow

Gay marriage is like male breastfeeding. According to the San Francisco Archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone.

In speaking to the British source, the Catholic Herald–Cardileone warns against using the term “gay marriage.”

Archbishop Cordileone cautions against over-using the term “gay marriage”, advising that it should be used “only sparingly” because it is a natural impossibility and if we keep talking about gay marriage we might fool ourselves into thinking it is an authentic reality, which only needs government approval to make it legitimate. He compares it with another impossibility: “Legislating for the right for people of the same sex to marry is like legalising male breastfeeding.”

As noted by the Huffington Post:

Cordileone’s comparison seems to imply that both same-sex marriage and breastfeeding by men are both impossible. However, same-sex marriage is legal in several states and while rare, men can lactate.

The Scientific American notes several scenarios that could and have caused male lactation, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond added that male milk production could be advantageous in a modern society.

Traditional Catholicism sees procreation as one of the greatest goods of marriage. Since two men or two women cannot naturally produce children–there cannot be such a thing as a gay marriage. This view of marriage is also seen in the Catholic view of contraception and leads to the Church’s hardline stance against birth control in almost all forms; a view which is rarely understood by those who don’t espouse Catholicism.

The challenge for the rest of us to move past the assertions which seem inflammatory at first blush. We need to take all sides of the argument at face value and attempt to understand the intellectual framework that leads to ridiculous-sounding arguments like, “Gay marriage is like male breastfeeding.”   Oftentimes, there is argument with a semblance of logic. It’s up to us to raise the level of discourse.