Same Sex Marriage and Natural Law

Why then is [same sex marriage] against the natural law? First of all, because man is a species-being and, as we have said, the species to which he belongs—the species that defines his nature—is both rational and social. Men cannot live at all—much less live well—except by the mutual protection and mutual support of other human beings. Morality refers to those rules that mankind has learned, both from reason and experience, are necessary for surviving and prospering. The inclination of many men—what we might call the inclination of their lower nature—to take their sex where they find it (whether their partners consent to it or not) and ignore the consequences, must be subordinated to their higher nature, which includes the interest of society (and the interest of nature in the species). For in no other species are the young so helplessly dependent for so long. Hence the importance, even for survival, of both the moral and civil laws governing the institution of marriage and of the family. We know that the relaxation of these laws leads to disorder, disease, and death, no less surely in the most advanced cultures of modernity than in the most primitive. But the good of the family is not that only of self-preservation and survival, but of the higher good—the happiness—of all its members, including those whose original horizon may not have extended beyond immediate gratification.

Harry Jaffa- Homosexuality and Natural Law [emphasis added]