The state senator leading the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania said yesterday that in the many dozens of conversations he has had with supporters of traditional marriage, he has never once heard a “rational” argument for keeping marriage as it is.

Daylin Leach, a Democrat, has introduced a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. Though he appears to make friendly overtures to opponents of traditional marriage, he trivializes and ridicules their concerns. He said fears that same-sex marriage could ultimately lead to group marriage or marriage between friends or relatives were silly, comparable to worrying the state might sanction marriage between a man and a lawn mower. 

Leach is delightfully open-minded. He just has never heard a reason for marriage between a man and a woman that wasn’t based on irrational prejudice and religious sentiment. “That’s not my religion,” he said, speaking on Dom Giordano’s talk show.  A civil institution that is thousands of years old, a tradition that predates Christianity, that was alive and well in the ancient world despite open homosexuality, is founded on irrationality and small-mindedness.

Here’s a question I have for Mr. Leach. If marriage between a man and a woman is irrational, why did it ever come into existence in the first place? Why has it lasted so long?

A man and a woman together are the indivisible unit of procreation. Is that wild opinion? Does Leach know of any human being conceived without the biological input of both a man and a woman? 

Studies – not opinions – show that children raised in homes with both a father and a mother fare remarkably better in life than those who grow up with just one or the other. A man and a woman are not just the indivisible unit of physical procreation. They are the indivisible unit of psychological procreation. Are these findings, which confirm over and over, that children have a universal desire and need for a father and a mother irrational? I would like the reasonable senator to explain. 

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