Answer

If Two People Love Each Other, Why Does Gender Matter in Marriage?

If marriage is about two people loving each other and committing to each other, it is not obvious why their sexes should come into it. That is a serious question, and it usually comes from someone who has watched a same-sex couple be kind and faithful to each other and wants to know what the objection actually is.

Because marriage is not only about the two people in it. Love matters enormously and it is not the whole definition. Marriage joins a man and a woman in covenant, provides God’s setting for creating and raising children, and links generations on both sides into one family. Gender matters because two of those three things depend on it.

Eternal Truths

Jesus answered a question about marriage by going back to the design. When the Pharisees pressed Him on marriage law, He did not appeal to custom or to preference. He said that from the beginning God “made them male and female,” and that for this cause the two become one flesh (Matthew 19:4-6). He treated how it was set up as the reason.

The Proclamation says the same thing and adds why it matters. The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, that gender is an essential characteristic of eternal identity, and that the powers of procreation are to be employed within that covenant.

This is a claim about what marriage is for, not a ranking of people. Elder D. Todd Christofferson laid out the reasoning in “Why Marriage, Why Family”, tying marriage to the creation of the next generation and to the plan of salvation rather than to social convention.

What Can Make This Confusing?

The teaching gets heard as a series of things it is not saying. It is not saying that a marriage without children is less of a marriage. It is not saying that affection between two people of the same sex is not real. It is not saying that anyone outside the pattern is outside God’s care. When those are the things a person expects to hear, the actual claim never reaches them.

Questions to Think About

• What do I think marriage is for, and where did that answer come from?
• Am I defending a preference or reporting something I believe was revealed?
• If my own life does not currently match this teaching, what have I concluded about myself?

What You Can Do

Read Matthew 19:4-6 and the Proclamation’s second and fourth paragraphs together this week and write down, in a sentence, what marriage is for according to each. Then, if your own life looks nothing like that, notice that believing a doctrine and living a life that does not currently match it are not in conflict. Most people who hold this teaching are in that position at some point. A definition that bends to circumstances stops being able to tell anyone anything, which is precisely why it can still be true for you later. The essay behind this Answer works through the objections in full.

Jesus Christ defined marriage before anyone had an opinion about it, and He can hold you steady whether or not your life currently fits the pattern He described.