John Howard suggests civic partnerships as a compromise in the gay marriage debate (how very original!), on the basis that procreation is the essence of marriage and that keeping marriage and civil partnerships separate will make clear that only a husband and wife may have children, thus supposedly limiting the spread of radical reproductive technologies. He thinks his proposal will differentiate supporters of gay partnership from advocates of such technology. However, his compromise completely elides three basic facts.

First, many gay advocates appear to believe that marriage offers social validation of their relationship, not a passport to children. Moreover, the majority of people in the USA do not believe procreation is the essence of marriage, so there is no reason for gay marriage advocates to begin from that position. The United States is unusually strong in its majority rejection of the very idea that children are the main reason for marriage:

Fact two. While American society is not exactly friendly to single parents, it does not actively prosecute people for having children out of wedlock. More than a third of American births happen outside marriage [National Center for Health Statistics]. Forcing gay partners to make do with civil partnerships would do little to establish a strong connection between marriage and procreation.

Fact three. Thousands of men and women already use reproductive technologies such as fertility treatment and surrogacy in the creation of children. Three million people have been born worldwide with the help of IVF [BBC News]. Excluding gay couples from marriage will do little to stop the demand for reproductive technology. But promoting the idea that procreation is central to marriage is sure to increase it. Over at Crooked Timber today Harry asked for ‘a really good article, by someone philosophically sophisticated, which argues against gay marriage’ and the tumbleweed rolled past. Commenting on Somerville’s opposition to gay marriage for fear that it will open the door to radical reproductive technologies, ‘susanc’ notes that:

Strangely enough, similar concerns make me opposed to reproductive definit[i]ons of marriage. Suppose some really extreme government limits marriage to couples who have biological children (so post-menopausal women or men with too low a sperm count can’t marry). This would create a strong incentive to use reproductive technologies (that might not be entirely safe) just to have children, in order to get married. When, absent the biological definition of marriage, couples might have been happy getting married and adopting, or not having children, or having children via a sperm donor etc.…)

It’s striking that the most enthusiastic adopters of IVF have been in Israel, where a majority do believe that children are the main purpose of marriage.

• Smith, Tom W. (1999), The Emerging 21st Century American Family (National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago (PDF).

Over at Cliopatra, Oscar Chamberlain bewails the amazing loss of NASA’s original tapes of the Moon landing. See the original report by John M. Sarkissian (warning: big PDF) for the full gory details. The films in question were of much higher quality than the versions eventually broadcast. Some hope that this could finally stamp out the conspiracy theories about the moon landings being faked, though to me this idea seems to show a certain naivety. Chamberlain complains that: ‘The real crime here is that NASA seems to have no historian, which is truly extraordinary. And quite sad.’ He’s echoing The Telegraph, which reported:

‘I just think this is what happens when you have a large government bureaucracy that functions for decade after decade,’ said Keith Cowing, the editor of the website Nasa Watch.

‘It’s not malicious or intentional, but I think it’s unfortunate that Nasa doesn’t have maybe just one more person whose job it is to look back at its history.’

But NASA has had a history programme — and an official chief historian — since 1959. The current encumbent in Stephen J. Dick. So there must be some miscommunication here somewhere.