Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion

by Allie Beth Stuckey

Keyes asserted that marriage between a man and a woman is life-producing in principle, even if not always in practice, and that is what makes it unique. The word “in principle” means “relating to the definition of.” Not relating to particular circumstances…Human beings reason by means of concepts and definitions. We also make laws by means of definitions…. An individual who is impotent or another who is infertile does not change the definition of marriage in principle. Because between a man and a woman in principle procreation is always possible, and it is that possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first place as a matter of law and governance. But when it is impossible as between two males or two females, you’re talking about something that’s not just incidentally impossible, it’s impossible in principle. And that means that if you say that that’s a marriage, you are saying marriage can be understood in principle apart from procreation. You have changed its definition in such a way as in fact to destroy the necessity for the institution, since the only reason it has existed in human societies and civilizations was to regulate from a social point of view the obligations and responsibilities attendant upon procreation.[4]