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This is really homophobic in my opinion because the unconditional element is most striking. Marriage is unconditional in two senses: first, the commitment is not conditioned by other commitments, no matter what they may be. Such commitments include parents, friends, one's psychological needs, career goals, spiritual interests, sexual drives, addictions of any sort, and the like. Second, in the marriage relationship, both partners confront the unconditional dimension of life and find it deeply and profoundly personal. This means that in and through one another, each partner confronts the ultimate meaning of his/her life precisely by sharing life unconditionally with another person; put differently, husband and wife discover the presence of God in the sharing of daily life with another.

Marriage is exclusive in so far as everyone else is excluded from the innermost circle of intimacy, both sexual and personal, shared between the two partners—no one else has access to the inner heart and mind, as well as the body, of the partner in exactly the same way. For this same reason, marriage is also inclusive because all of one's life—one's finances, career, leisure time, friendships, relationship to family friends, even one's other so-called soul-mates—must be understood from the stand-point of, and in light of, the marriage commitment. Put differently, the whole of one's life, history, successes, failures, hopes and dreams, joys and sorrows, are included in the relationship between two people.

In defining marriage this way, I am also defining what Catholicism calls a sacramental marriage. For the Catholic tradition, marriage is a commitment between a man and a woman that is modeled on the commitment of Christ and his Church, on a commitment of unconditional love. Ted Mackin defines sacramental marriage this way:

This then is what it means for a Christian man and woman to live their marriage as a sacrament: that they find in one another's habitual attitude and conduct evidence of the presence of the Creator; more particularly that both believe, and rule their conduct by the belief, that they are held in existence by divine creation and that they are drawn to God by their love for one another and the intimate sharing that acts out this love; in short that they are instruments, willing instruments, of the Creator.

More particularly still, a man and woman live their marriage sacramentally if they believe that in loving one another they are responding to the Creator's call to intimacy with Godself, into a communion consisting of knowledge and love that begins in their lives this side of death but can continue through and past their deaths into unending communion with the divine life; [if they believe that this invitation to intimacy is at the same time the Creator's effort to rescue them from their sinfulness, their powerful tendency to protect themselves, to distrust the other's invasion of their privacy and freedom, and to stay closed off from intimacy, using one another merely for pleasure and security.

NOW GUESS MY GENDER.

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