Natural families are natural. And families.

Captain Obvious, right? Well, I think so. Apparently I’m in a minority in my own land.

If you object to the government arbitrarily defining away the residency status of professional-class undocumented immigrants, as a way of legally recognising, protecting and supporting the situated realities of such immigrants – in other words, if you support the Daca and Dapa programmes – it follows in the same vein that you should also object to the government arbitrarily defining away the ontological, biological basis of marriage, as a way of legally recognising, sanctifying, protecting and supporting the situated reality of natural families (consisting of a biological father, a biological mother and their biological children).

The reasoning undergirding Daca / Dapa is, in fact, the same which undergirds the defence of the natural family by the Protestants who put together and signed the Nashville Statement. The exact same, in fact. The entire rationale for Daca was that the children of the union of undocumented immigrants, by virtue of their status as natural children, should be entitled to the array of legal protections afforded to the children of citizen parents. Dapa, similarly, was an assertion of parental rights to the society of their natural children.

Undermine the understanding of marriage as a permanent and procreative union between one man and one woman, and you’ve already started to undermine the philosophical basis for the legal protections given to Dreamers and their families.

The converse logic also holds. If you start selectively defining which resident family units count as family units on the basis of the immigration status of one or both parents, as the Daca / Dapa repeal would do, then you remove any chance or possibility of reëstablishing an ontologically-valid understanding of marriage. Let alone any of the legal ramifications of such an understanding.

Unfortunately, neither of our two parties can see this, because American politics is tribal rather than rational or consistent. On the other hand, it is wholly rational and consistent to support both a traditional view of marriage and policies which protect the integrity of the natural families of immigrants who are not guilty of any violent crime.

(Note that I am neither calling for open borders here, nor for the persecution of LGBT people. Yet I fully expect the fanatics of either side will attack me for doing both.)