Human beings reason by means of concepts and definitions, and we also make laws by means of definitions, and if you don't know how to operate with respect for those definitions, you can't make the law.

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, where you're not just talking about something that's 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 of 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.

When you start playing games in this way, you are actually acting as if the institution has no basis independent of your own arbitrary whim.

Allen Keyes