Mona Charen, Ted Olsen and Marriage

At Townhall, Mona Charen has a column in counterpoint to Ted Olsen's pro gay marriage crap.

Charen:

Families began disintegrating and failing to form long before gay marriage became a cause celebre. But the movement for same-sex marriage pushes our culture in exactly the wrong direction because it forwards a damaging conception of marriage. Marriage, Olson says, "is about being with the person you love."

Not so. Marriage is about the welfare of children. The state confers benefits on opposite-sex couples because they conceive and raise children, and it believes that strong families are the foundation of strong polities. Libertarian claims that the state should remain aloof from family matters overlook the fact that when couples divorce or part ways, the state becomes involved in property division and custody, so it's unrealistic to keep the state out.

The problem with endorsing same-sex marriage is that it conveys to heterosexuals that mothers and fathers don't really matter.

I refer you to my post on Marriage as a gift of self, in imitation of the self giving of Jesus on the Cross.

Giving oneself completely, means all of oneself, always; your fruitfulness, your complementarity.  Marriage isn't just unitive, it is at the same time procreative.

The deepest meaning of love is to give yourself freely for another; your whole self, not just some part, not just for some convenient period of time, but for the whole of your life, until death do you part.  Since it is a free gift of self, marriage cannot be coerced, as it has been done routinely in many cultures throughout history.   It was the coming of Christianity which brought that practice to an end in our culture.

Marriage is fruitful because the defining act of Marriage is sexual intercourse between the husband and wife.  The husband and wife have complementary sexual organs.  This complementarity is essential for the propagation of the species, and is essential for the culture to be passed along to the future.  Marriage provides the stable building block on which culture and civilization stand, because the children who are the fruit of the sexual intercourse, are raised by their parents to be good solid members of their society.

Don't the states declare NULL marriages that are not consummated by sexual intercourse between the husband and wife?

I highly recommend reading Familiaris Consortio, and Deus Caritas Est.