Bishop Kevin Doran said at a talk on Thursday night organised by The Iona Institute that if we permit same-sex marriage, the link between marriage as an institution and procreation will have been destroyed. This is the child-centred view of marriage.

Brian Sheehan of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN) responded by offering a very adult-centred view of marriage thereby proving Bishop Doran’s point.

Brian (who is one of the nice guys of the same-sex marriage movement by the way), told The Irish Times in response to Bishop Doran that marriage was “about two people who share a deep love making a profound commitment to each other to share their lives together. There is no requirement for any couple getting married to say they want or are going to have children. It is just seen as a profound commitment to another human being.”

As I say, this rather proves Bishop Doran’s point because Brian’s vision of marriage is extremely adult-centred rather than child-centred.

Brian is correct, of course, to say that couples can marry who can’t have children, but then again couples can also marry who don’t love each other. Marriages of convenience are not unheard of after all.

But does this ‘prove’ marriage isn’t about love? Of course not. All it proves is that being in love isn’t an absolute requirement of marriage. And nor is having children an absolute requirement.

Nonetheless, the vast majority of people still, quite rightly, associate marriage with both love and children.

By the way, notice how Brian leaves the sexual dimension out of marriage. I presume that was an oversight.

Either way, along with Bishop Doran we have to ask why the State should have any interest in marriage above and beyond any other kind of committed relationship (sexual or not) once children are left out of the picture of what marriage is?

Marriage as an institution has arisen in all places and all times that we know of (albeit with variations) because the sexual unions of men and women are different in kind from any other sort of unions, sexual or not. It is only the sexual unions of men and women that are capable of giving rise to children, after all.

As I have argued many times before, it makes perfect sense to treat something unique in a unique way, and marriage in its present and perfectly logical form does exactly that.

But if we take children out of the equation, and if we decide for some strange reason that the sexual and emotional unions of men and women are not different in any socially significant way from any other kind of union, then we have to ask why should the State give special recognition to marriage at all and least of all to Brian’s very adult-centred vision of it?