"Daddy can't leave the nursing home, but you can stop by and show him your diploma through his oxygen tent."

Imagine being an 18 year-old high school senior at graduation, milling about with family and friends. Only this kid is surrounded by a man who's 84 years old and three other adults, aged 63, 61 and 58. And a woman younger than the others.

"This is my dad and mom and my step-brothers and sisters," the kid explains.

That's the world of former The Dating Game host Bob Eubanks, who takes literally the anti-marriage equality crowd that marriage is about the children- even when you produce them knowing you're not likely to live long enough to see them to adulthood, or even be much more than an increasingly doddering presence in their lives before you peg off.

Think of  the Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, who produced a child at the age of 84 and died five years later; or the actor Tony Randall, who conjured two children at age 77 and 78 and died at 84.