THE US Supreme Court ruled the legalization of same sex marriage in all their 50 states on Friday, June 26, 2015. While their laws don’t have much bearing in our country, the landmark decision may just have quite heavy implications on how we define family––something we are probably not yet ready to chew. My respect goes to the LGBT community but one can just wonder why there is a clamor for legal recognition of the right to enter into marriage when in all of history, or at least in the Philippines, the LGBT community was never really barred from “loving” whoever they wish to love? So is this really an issue of “love” or is it something else entirely? Love is a universal right. One does not need a law to claim such entitlement. No one can stop me from showing love to a homeless kid I just met on the road, not even a law prohibiting dole outs if there ever is such. In the same manner, no law or an absence of one can ever stop anyone from loving another person regardless of age, gender and sexual orientation. So why push for same sex marriage? The clamor for institutionalizing same sex union challenges one of the fundamental principles we hold as a society in defining family as a basic social unit. Our view on family is somehow rooted on the natural set-up of things. Like in a tree as a unit, it has roots, a trunk, and leaves to survive and be productive. If it’s all roots, it can’t bear a fruit. If it’s all leaves, it can’t stand to shade and provide oxygen. The family, like the tree, is a structure. It is after all the basic social structure, and any minute change on such will surely alter everything else. I am not saying that gay people can’t be good parents. No, in fact, I have seen how some gay partners provide better care to their children than some heterosexual couples do. That is not the point. After all, in our history, they were never really stopped from providing care to any child they wish to raise, be it their blood relative or someone else. Again, that is not the point. There are three things why I say same sex marriage is found wanting in the concept of a “family.” First, is that a family is a unit of pro-creation. We are gifted with a gender, i.e. male and female, fundamentally so we can ensure the survival of our species. Nature dictates that our perfection is found in complementarity with the opposite sex. All other forms of sexual acts are unnatural and debatably inappropriate. Otherwise we would have been engineered as asexual like some of the plants. Second is that, with gender comes the gift of sexuality. The difference between males and females are not only limited to biological anatomy. With it is a whole package of manhood and womanhood that brings about complementarity in the composition and in raising a family. We can always cook with only vinegar, but there is always something in soy sauce that no vinegar could ever compensate. Yes, gay people can always and have always lived in love under one roof, and I am not against that. It would be utter ignorance to discriminate people who embrace the gay life. But then again, the moment they choose to live the alternative lifestyle they have foregone their chance to experience union that we technically call family. In economics, that is called “opportunity cost.” Third is that marriage is a legal institution that binds our technical definition of a family, a blanket we use to channel all other civil and criminal privileges. All our laws were made under the presumption that a family is composed of a father, a mother and their kids. To cater same sex marriage to be a legally binding contract equal to our old school marital contract would mean to re-engineer all other laws to fit on this new circumstance. The legal implications are just too massive to hastily decide on such matter. There’s that implications on parenthood and adoption, estates, last will and testaments, and special rights. I love gay people. They should be afforded with the dignity that any one deserves. But to say that the issue on same sex marriage is about the right to love is outright misleading. On same-sex marriage