A Moral Quandry.

Perhaps I've been reading John C. Wright's blog too much (why aren't you?), but a question of morality popped into my head yesterday and has been bugging me since. It concerns science fiction/fantasy.

If voluptuous space alien babes were to land on the planet Earth tomorrow, could I (assuming I'm single), morally wed one? The answer I devised for this question was based on the intercompatibility of the species. Since marriage is an institution designed to promote the family, and since we know through faith and reason that the sex act must be ordered towards procreation, I think the morality of that marriage would depend on if the voluptuous space alien babes (VSAB from here on in) are biologically similar enough to humans to be able to procreate.

(Note that the chances of some random ET landing on Earth and being able to produce offspring with humans are probably something in the order of one in the XKCD number, where the XKCD number is the Ackermann function, with Graham's number as both arguments. This is one problem with Star Trek, where people are always mating with other aliens. There is no way Spock, being half-human, half-vulcan, is even remotely biologically likely.)

So with the easy question out of the way, we come to the hard one. What if you don't know if you're biologically capable of producing offspring with VSABs?

Of course, with modern technology, we could probably answer this question just by examining the genetics of the two species. But suppose that technology is not available.

Perhaps I should go back to what inspired the question in the first place.

In World of Warcraft (those of you who didn't see that coming obviously don't know me very well), one of my main characters is a Draenei, while The Resident Murloc's is a Night Elf. We typically play these two characters together, and I began to wonder whether they could marry. (Note that I am presupposing, even though Christianity doesn't exist in the Warcraft universe, that sex is intended for procreation and any use if it that contradicts that purpose is illicit and contrary to the natural law, which is independent of religion.)

Within the lore, I don't know if it has been established if Night Elves and Draenei are biologically compatible enough to produce offspring with one another. (I know other races are compatible; Garona is a half-human, half-orc.) So, the question poses serious ramifications for Golyath, being an upstanding and noble Shaman who wishes to do what is right by Nevlonniel. How can he, morally, determine if he is biologically compatible with a night elf, and until that is known, how does that affect his prospects for marriage to this lovely night-elf?

(For all zero of you who are interested, I used to play another Night Elf, Legolamb, along with Nevlonniel. I imagine that Outland changed Lego, and he became cold and distant from his former love, until he finally left her (his change is manifested in his new haircut). In reality, I got tired of playing the most useless class in the game, and wanted to actually feel like I was contributing something in a raid.)

This question has plenty of other contexts aside from WoW, too. For instance, what if some humans were taken by Ra through the Stargate, where they lived separated from their Earth-living relatives for tens of thousands of years, before being reunited, only to discover that they have evolved along different paths and are not biologically compatible with each other? In this case, they might even still be considered the same species.

It does have interesting ramifications, too. We know that homosexuality is disordered because it involves the desire to use the sexual facilities in an unnatural way, that is, in a manner that is contrary to the nature of the sexual act (that nature being the unity of the spouses and procreation). But what about my heterosexual desire for the non-biologically-compatible VSABs? Even though that union is innately contradictory to the nature of sex, is my desire for the well-endowded female aliens also perverse? Suppose we take it one step further and say that they look like Earth-women, only hotter, how is my... how am I supposed to know the difference?

It would also make for an interesting science fiction story. Space Babe lands on earth. Earth man falls in love with, and weds, Space Babe. 193 pages of hot alien-tentacled love later, they determine their species are biologically incompatible. Action sequences ensue, perhaps involving Space Pirates. And of course the Space Babe is also a Space Princess, so it can be considered part of the New Space Princess movement of speculative fiction.

Someone call Mr. Wright. I would write it myself, but with 4 and 2/3 books left to go in my own series, it will be a while before I can get to it.

Why yes, it has been slow at work recently.