What Would Jesus Think of Robert George?

David Kirkpatrick: Robert P. George, the Conservative-Christian Big Thinker:

George argues that only vaginal intercourse — “procreative-type” sex acts, as George puts it — can consummate this “multilevel” mind-body union. Only in reproduction, unlike digestion, circulation, respiration or any other bodily function, do two individuals perform a single function and thus become, in effect, “one organism.” Each opposite-sex partner is incomplete for the task; yet together they create a “one-flesh union,” in the language of Scripture. “Their bodies become one (they are biologically united, and do not merely rub together) in coitus (and only in coitus), similarly to the way in which one’s heart, lungs and other organs form a unity by coordinating for the biological good of the whole,” George writes.... Unloving sex between married partners does not perform the same multilevel function, he argues, nor does oral or anal sex — even between loving spouses. Infertile couples, too, are performing this uniquely shared reproductive function, George says.... Marriage is designed in part for procreation in the way a baseball team is designed for winning games, he says, but “people who can practice baseball can be teammates without victories on the field.” George argues that reason alone shows that heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sex are morally wrong... [as] classical philosophers and other religious traditions have historically taught.... [S]uch acts treat the body as an instrument of the mind’s pleasure. As both a practical and a philosophical matter, he argues, the law should not necessarily police such things. But the need for the state to establish a proper definition of marriage is a different matter, he says, because the law has always regulated it in the interest of parenthood and community. “Marriage in principle is a public institution,” he said. “I don’t think it can be like bar mitzvahs or baptisms or the Elks Club.” It is safe to say that not many contemporary philosophers — whether secular or Catholic — agree with George’s marriage argument...