ThinkProgress reports on an inter­view with Jen­nifer Roback Morse of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Mar­riage [sic].  The explain:

Jen­nifer Roback Morse of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Marriage’s Ruth Insti­tute has been par­tic­u­lar­ly vocal over the past few months, pro­mot­ing ex-gay ther­a­py and sug­gest­ing that young peo­ple not have gay friends. In an inter­view pub­lished in Sal­vo Mag­a­zine in Sep­tem­ber, she was quite can­did about the archa­ic stereo­types about same-sex cou­ples that inform her anti-gay positions:

Morse tells Salvo:

MORSE: If you look at same-sex cou­ples, both at what they say and their behav­ior, nei­ther per­ma­nence nor sex­u­al exclu­siv­i­ty plays the same sig­nif­i­cant role. In oth­er words, if you’re in a union that’s intrin­si­cal­ly not pro­cre­ative, sex­u­al exclu­siv­i­ty is not as impor­tant. Once you start think­ing like that, you’ll see that every­thing peo­ple offer as rea­sons why same-sex cou­ples should be “allowed” to get married—all of the rea­sons are pri­vate pur­pos­es. Some­times it’s noth­ing more than how it will make them feel. It’s not the busi­ness of law to make peo­ple feel a cer­tain way. When you see that redefin­ing mar­riage is going to, in fact, rede­fine the mean­ing of par­ent­hood, remov­ing biol­o­gy as the basis for par­ent­hood and replac­ing it with legal constructions—then you see that there is quite a lot at stake in get­ting the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage right.

Set aside this gross mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the monog­a­mous capa­bil­i­ties of same-sex cou­ples, and her naive claim that mar­riages are now or ever were, as a prac­ti­cal mat­ter, sex­u­al­ly exclu­sive. It should be not­ed that, despite Morse’s protes­ta­tions, what she’s propos­ing is actu­al­ly a dra­mat­ic rede­f­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage, not a defense of mar­riage as it has been prac­ticed in liv­ing memory. 

Con­sid­er: My grand­moth­er was wid­owed after all her chil­dren were grown, and she remar­ried before I and some of my cousins were born, and well after her repro­duc­tive years were over.  Her sec­ond hus­band had his own chil­dren and grand­chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage, and in time those fam­i­lies merged fair­ly completely.

By Ms. Morse’s account, Grand­pa Herb was­n’t real­ly my grand­fa­ther.  She’s argu­ing that I’ve rede­fined mar­riage by call­ing him my grand­fa­ther, and that I’ve rede­fined grand­par­ent­hood and par­ent­hood, too.  She’s argu­ing that because my grand­par­ents’ rela­tion­ship was “intrin­si­cal­ly not pro­cre­ative,” they were prob­a­bly not sex­u­al­ly exclu­sive, and that my grand­par­ents should not have been “allowed” (her scare quotes) to get mar­ried.  Their mar­riage was just about “how it will make them feel,” not about pop­ping out babies, so it was some­how not worth it.  I don’t agree.

Sim­i­lar­ly, she seems to hold that the mar­riages of friends of mine who are inten­tion­al­ly child­less are worth­less, as are mar­riages where one or more part­ner is phys­i­cal­ly inca­pable of con­ceiv­ing a child.

This jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, which is incred­i­bly com­mon from the mar­riage seg­re­ga­tion camp, sim­ply does­n’t hold togeth­er.  It is not a defense of any mod­ern mar­riage tra­di­tion.  It vague­ly resem­bles Hen­ry VII­I’s view on mar­riage, but to find a ver­sion of mar­riage that real­ly match­es what Morse describes, you may have to go back to Gen­e­sis, and the sto­ry of Abra­ham and Sarah.  God promis­es Abra­ham that he’ll have a son, but the years drag on and his wife offers a suggestion:

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no chil­dren. She had an Egypt­ian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, ‘You see that the Lord has pre­vent­ed me from bear­ing chil­dren; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain chil­dren by her.’ And Abram lis­tened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived for ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egypt­ian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her hus­band Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived.

The baby is named Ish­mael, and Hagar – the slave who Abra­ham’s first wife gave him as a sec­ond wife (tra­di­tion­al mar­riage!) – gets all uppi­ty.  So Sarah, the first wife, gets angry and tries to kill her slave/­co-wife (tra­di­tion­al mar­riage!), but God inter­venes and Sarah relents. Then Sodom and Gomor­rah get destroyed (in a pas­sage much beloved by NOM), and Abra­ham and Sarah get even old­er, and Abra­ham lets King Abim­elech steal Sarah away after claim­ing she’s his wife, not his sis­ter but God warns Abim­elech not to mess with her and Abra­ham points out that she’s his wife, but also his half-sis­ter (tra­di­tion­al mar­riage!). They go on a while longer before, lo and behold!, she gets preg­nant and gives birth to Isaac and starts hat­ing on Ish­mael all over again:

Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egypt­ian, whom she had borne to Abra­ham, play­ing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abra­ham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inher­it along with my son Isaac.’

Abra­ham starts to object, but God tells him it’s OK to go along with it because it’ll all work out. Then, to quote Dylan, “God said to Abra­ham, ‘kill me a son.’ Abe said, ‘man, you must be putting me on.’ God said, ‘no.’ Abe said, ‘what?’ God said, ‘you can do what you want, Abe, but the next time you see me com­ing, you bet­ter run.’ Abe said, ‘where you want this killing done?’ and God said,” well not actu­al­ly “High­way 61,” but you get the gist.  Tradition!

If we hold up Abra­ham as a mod­el of tra­di­tion­al mar­riage, which seems to be what NOM wants, then we have to grant that pro­cre­ation seems to be essen­tial to the enter­prise, but we have to acknowl­edge the tra­di­tion of plur­al mar­riage, arranged mar­riage, and inces­tu­ous mar­riage, and we have to forcibly annul a bunch of lov­ing, het­ero­sex­u­al mar­riages which can­not pro­duce offspring.

All this from a group which claims to be “for marriage.”