The Other Marriage Inequality

While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder

Over the weekend, thanks to CPAC, there was a lot of talk about gay marriage and "marriage inequality." Well, I've been supporting gay marriage for a long time --​ much, much longer than Barack Obama. But if you're talking about "marriage inequality," there's another kind of marriage inequality that isn't getting nearly as much attention and that is doing more harm to more people than the gay-marriage thing.

That's the inequality in marriage rates between the upper-middle-class, and the lower and lower-middle classes. While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder. Unfortunately, the people who are foregoing marriage are probably the ones who need it most.

This past summer, Jason DeParle noted in The New York Times that we are now seeing "two classes divided by 'I do.'" And while people are going on and on about Wall Street and income inequality, it turns out that marriage inequality is one of the biggest things making people less equal, accounting for as much as 40% of the difference in incomes: "It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged."

This isn't new. Five years ago, The Washington Post noted the trend: a class-based marriage gap. "We seem to be reverting to a much older pattern, when elites marry and a great many others live together and have kids."

What we're seeing here, and elsewhere, is a breakdown in the great Progressive project of the late 19th and early 20th centuries of elevating the lower classes into the middle class. That project involved changes in society and in social mores that encouraged behaviors giving children more stable home environments and better prospects for social improvement. All of that is fading now.

The Decline of Marriage and the Rise of Unwed Mothers: An Economic Mystery

The real question here isn't "Why so many babies?" It's "Why so few marriages?" And we have an answer.

DEREK THOMPSONMAR 18 2013, 12:01 PM ET

Reuters

This was the most shocking statistic I read this weekend: 58 percent of first births in lower-middle-class households are now to unmarried women. Meanwhile, two in five of all births are to unwed mothers, an all-time high, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Why?

The thesis of this fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal says the real mystery here isn't "Why so many babies?" but rather "Why so few marriages?" -- particularly among less-educated men and women.

This is a complex economic mystery that we've explored often at The Atlantic, but we can take a big bite out of it by focusing on three factors: (1) The changing meaning of marriage in America; (2) declining wages for low-skill men; and (3) the declining costs of being a single person.

A New Union

Marriage has changed. Once upon a time, the typical marriage, as Justin Wolfers has explained, involved special roles for the husband and wife. He would work. She would stay home. It was an efficient arrangement where opposites attracted. Men who wanted to be executives would marry women who wanted to be housewives. And, since almost half of women had no independent earnings 40 years ago, there were a lot of women who just wanted to work at home and raise a family.

Several factors mussed up this traditional union. Today women expect to work much, much more than they used to -- and they do. They make up the majority of new college graduates and their labor participation rate has soared over 60 percent. Since 1950, hours of work by married women have increased by roughly a factor of three, according to theMinneapolis Fed. 

Now that women are better educated, with greater control over both their fertility and their earnings, modern marriage has changed from an arrangement where men marry for a housewife to a "hedonic" model where both partners can be the breadwinner. As marriage has shifted from opposites-attract to like-attracts-like, researchers have found that sorting has increased all along the educational scale. College graduates are more likely than ever to marry college graduates, as Charles Murray has written. High school dropouts are more likely to marry high school dropouts.

Think of marriage like any other contract or investment. It's most likely to happen when the gains are big. So we should expect marriages among low-income Americans to decline if women perceive declining gains from hitching themselves to the men around them.

Read more at the Atlantic.

The Battle for Marriage in All 50 States is ON! NOM Marriage News

Dear Marriage Supporter,

Here I am on C-Span's prestigious Washington Journal, talking about the March 26 March for Marriage, taking our case to the very steps of the Supreme Court!

On the 26th, as we are marching outside the Court, demanding justice for marriage and for democracy, inside the Justices of our highest court will hear jousting from lawyers on both sides.

Myriad Defenses for Marriage at the Court

Ryan Anderson over at the Heritage Foundation has done a good job highlighting and providing links to the more than 50 amicus briefs for marriage now before the Court.

A sampling from Ryan's roundup:

Former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese argues that same-sex and opposite-sex relationships are not similarly situated:

Given the near-universal view, across different societies and different times, that a principal, if not the principal, purpose of marriage is the channeling of the unique procreative abilities of opposite-sex relationships into a societally beneficial institution, it is clear that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to that fundamental purpose.

A group of international jurists and academics points out that "same-sex marriage is not required by international human rights norms."

The Attorneys General for 20 states filed a joint brief defending the rational basis of their states' marriage laws.

Read more at National Organization for Marriage Blog.

Jim DeMint on the Defense of Marriage

Heritage President-elect Jim DeMint invites you to join the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C., on March 26 to defend the institution as the union of one man and one woman. |http://www.marriagemarch.org/

Brown University to teach male students how to attain ‘prostate pleasure’

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  By Oliver Darcy, on Mar 14, 2013

Brown University is set to hold an event on Thursday aimed at teaching its male students how to find sexual pleasure from their prostates.

Brown University is set to hold an event aimed at showing male students how to attain sexual pleasure from their prostates.

The workshop, entitled “The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure,” will be conducted by sexologist Charlie Glickman and promises to show attendees “how much fun prostate stimulation can be.”

The official event description asks students: “Are you curious about prostate play?”

Glickman will “talk about the common concerns that sometimes keep people from exploring it (and how to overcome them), tips for easy and pleasurable anal penetration, prostate massage, which toys work best for prostate fun, pegging, combining prostate pleasure with other kinds of sex, and much more,” it continues.

Following the presentation the school will host a night of “sex and chocolate in the dark” where students are advised to “bring blankets, pillows, friends, and questions for a night of cozy conversation in a dark, anonymyzing [sic] space.”

The events are part of Brown University’s annual sex week, paid for by the student activities office.

Read more at Campus Reform.

101 Reasons to Have Sex, Blizzards and Hook-up Culture

by ARIANA CARAFFA - BOSTON COLLEGE on MARCH 14, 2013

The blizzard “Nemo” that slammed the Northeast recently not only caused an estimated 14 deaths, power outages, driving bans, flight cancellations, and structure damages – it also gave college students a new reason to have sex.

Introducing the “blizzard hook-up,” one of many new excuses students have developed to justify meaningless sexual escapades, according to Kerry Cronin, Boston College professor and expert on the college hook-up culture.

The blizzard hook-up is a result of what she considers a “crack in time” event, she said in an interview with The College Fix.

She said she uncovered this new trend by talking with students who attend a variety of different colleges – public, private, secular and religious. Students now look to certain events and holidays to find an excuse for a random hook-up without reason, thought, or consequence, she said.

“You can sort of get away with it, and you don’t have to be responsible for it, because it’s considered a crack in time,” she explained.

Additional hook-ups that students have coined as a result of “crack in time” events, Cronin said, include the “snow day” hook-up, the “New Year’s Eve” hook-up, the “St. Patrick’s Day” hook-up, the “Marathon Monday” hook-up, and the “hurricane” hook-up – in honor of 2012 Hurricane Sandy – the hook-up that sparked Cronin’s interest in “crack in time” hook-ups.

Read more at College Fix.

Same-Sex Marriage and the Abyss of Nihilism

March 18th, 2013

We cannot embrace same-sex marriage and live in continuity with our past as a civilization. To embrace it is to deny that tradition, revelation, reason, and nature have any authority over us.

What would the triumph of same-sex marriage mean for American civilization? Americans disagree on this question. Liberals think of it merely as an incremental step toward justice understood as equality. For them, homosexuals have been unjustly excluded from marriage, and now they no longer will be. Nothing more momentous is involved.

Conservatives, on the other hand, think of same-sex marriage not as an extension of marriage but as a radical redefinition of it. To tamper with the very definition of a fundamental social institution like marriage, they warn, is to invite all manner of threatening consequences.

The conservatives are closer to the truth than the liberals on this question, but their foreboding does not go far enough. To embrace same-sex marriage is to plunge headlong into the abyss of nihilism. It is to step into a realm in which there are no longer any solid or reliable public standards of judgment as to what is right and wrong, just and unjust. It goes without saying, I hope, that this is not what the defenders of same-sex marriage intend. It is nevertheless the end toward which their position tends.

Tradition plays a larger role in some societies than in others. Put another way, some societies are more dynamic and forward-looking than others. Nevertheless, tradition is an important source of public standards in all societies. No community can afford to be so “progressive” as to disregard tradition entirely. To do so would be, in principle, to embrace chaos, since it would require constant renegotiation of the rules by which its members interact.

There is, however, no older or more widespread notion than that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. It would be no exaggeration to call this definition a tradition of the human race. It is safe to say that a society that rejects this definition has also, whether it wants to admit it or not, rejected the idea that tradition should exert any authority over the present.

Read more at Public Discourse.

Bracingly liberal views

Legal scholar Ronald Dworkin, the grand old man of political correctness, died earlier this month.

Ronald Dworkin, who has been called “the greatest legal philosopher of our time,” died on February 14 in London at age 81. The New York Times’obituary called him “a public intellectual of bracingly liberal views who insisted that morality is the touchstone of constitutional interpretation.”

That’s about right. To Dworkin’s credit, he opposed legal positivism, the view that the law is whatever the sovereign says it is, and he insisted on the importance of moral principle in interpreting law, particularly the Constitution’s abstract clauses like due process and equal protection. But he also gave natural law his own spin, as he argued that there was one right or uniquely correct answer that the law provided “to most hard cases.” This he called “the moral reading” (emphasis his). Note it was not “a moral reading,” but “the moral reading.” (emphasis mine).

“Bracingly liberal views,” it turns out, was synonymous for political correctness. Dworkin taught at both New York University School of Law and University College London. He had also taught for years at Oxford University, succeeding H.L.A. Hart in the chair of jurisprudence. Over a period of almost 50 years, he wrote over a hundred articles, reviews, and letters for the New York Review of Books. The subjects ranged from affirmative action to abortion and assisted suicide, health care, and civil disobedience. During the Vietnam War, for example, he defended conscientious objectors from the draft laws.

Recently, cultural critic Joseph Epstein wrote in the Wall Street Journal on this year’s 50^th anniversary of the New York Review of Books: “In its heyday, the NYRB was a radical chic publication. Its collapse came quite as much because of the fall of high culture as it did owing to the distaste for extreme radical politics after the terrorism of 9/11. … More important, the great figures of high culture are no longer there to write for the NYRB, to lend the drearily predictable articles against Republicans and in favor of Barack Obama the cultural support they so obviously require.”

Dworkin, it seems to me, epitomizes both the rise and the fall of that publication, particularly now that he is gone. For, much like Anthony Lewis churning out predictably liberal views on law and politics for the New York Times op-eds for decades without any memorable prose or trace of humor, Ronald Dworkin was always the solemn pontificator.

Read more at Mercator.Net.

We Don’t Need to Redefine Marriage to Fix Policy Problems

March 13th, 2013

Good public policy can meet the needs of all Americans without redefining marriage.

When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) later this month, many casual observers will focus on what they call the fairness of redefining marriage. Interestingly, though, the dispute at the heart of the DOMA case could have been avoided had Congress enacted fairer tax reform years ago.

Consider the facts: In 2010, Edith Windsor sued the federal government, demanding a refund on taxes she paid upon inheriting the estate of her same-sex partner.

The couple had obtained a marriage license in Toronto three years earlier. New York state, where they resided at the time, did not grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The state did recognize their foreign marriage certificate, but the federal government did not.

And so when her partner died in 2009, Ms. Windsor was forced to pay over $350,000 in federal estate taxes because she didn’t qualify for a marital exemption.

The lawsuit before the Supreme Court, set to be heard on March 27, seeks to strike down the section of DOMA that defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of a husband and a wife. In other words, to avoid this tax burden, the lawsuit seeks to redefine marriage.

Indeed, arguments for redefining marriage frequently hinge on questions of government benefits to same-sex couples. But more sensible solutions are possible. As this case shows, society can remove this burden without rushing to abolish marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

The Heritage Foundation has argued for eliminating the estate tax, popularly called the “death tax,” for more than fifteen years. In an influential 1996 report, Heritage argued that such reform was in line with the American dream and sense of justice. Tax law should not discourage savings and investment, nor punish hard work and thrift. Nor should it encourage Americans to consume now in order to avoid passing on wealth to loved ones because they would be taxed.

Killing the death tax would encourage economic growth, add jobs, and allow offices and factories to buy equipment that elevates productivity and wages. Lower capital costs mean new small businesses.

Best of all, such tax reform would treat all Americans fairly.

Read more at Public Discourse.

Marriage and Politics March 4, 2013 4:00 A.M. In our new book What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, we make a rational case for the historic understanding of marriage as a conjugal relationship — a union of a man and a woman at every level (mind, heart, and body), inherently oriented to family life. We show how the common good depends on enshrining this view in law, and answer all the most significant criticisms of this view (having to do with equality, freedom, neutrality, interracial marriage, infertile couples, and much more). We show how the argument for redefining marriage contradicts itself, and document the many ways that embracing it would harm the common good. And we show how society can support marriage without ignoring the needs, undermining the dignity, or curbing the fulfillment of people with same-sex attractions. Here, we respond to some challenges that even those sympathetic to our views might raise: Why worry about same-sex marriage in particular? Why worry about marriage policy? If marriage policy does matter, why not “broaden the definition” of marriage to promote family values? How would recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages harm marriage? Isn’t ours a losing cause, or at best a secondary one? And why privilege anyone’s sectarian values at all — doesn’t that compromise freedom and equality? We address each of these questions in turn. Why focus on opposing the recognition of same-sex partnerships as marriages? Aren’t widespread divorce and single parenting the real problems? Why do conservatives focus exclusively on same-sex marriage? The answer is simple: We don’t. Conservatives always did, and still do, make other social and political efforts to strengthen the marriage culture. The push to redefine marriage was brought to us. We don’t know a single person involved in this effort who wouldn’t rather focus on something else. But now that this is the live debate, we can’t ignore it, for its outcome will have wider effects on the marriage culture that really is our main concern. Long before the debate over same-sex marriage, a “marriage movement” was launched to explain why marriage was good for husbands and wives faithful to its demands, for their children, and for society more broadly. Prominent articles, such as “Dan Quayle Was Right,” Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s cover story for The Atlantic in 1993, tallied the high social costs of family fragmentation. The next decade saw the emergence of organizations such as Mike and Harriet McManus’s Marriage Savers and policies such as the Bush administration’s Healthy Marriage Initiative. The targets of these and countless other initiatives were high divorce and cohabitation rates and the rising birth rate among unmarried women. Same-sex relationships weren’t on anyone’s radar. It was in this marriage movement that Maggie Gallagher, today’s leading opponent of redefining marriage, was active throughout the 1980s and ’90s. She wrote books documenting the sexual revolution’s damage to “family, marriage, and sex” and making “the case for marriage” as a better arrangement for couples than cohabitation. One of us (RPG) joined her in the ’80s after witnessing the havoc wrought by the collapsing marriage culture in his native Appalachia. (The other two of us were busy gestating or learning to read.) None of this was about gay anything. Though the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, the question of whether to redefine marriage to eliminate sexual complementarity didn’t take center stage until 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court created a constitutional right to recognition of same-sex partnerships as marriages. By then, the marriage movement’s leaders had no choice. They had to decide: Would recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages strengthen the marriage culture or further weaken it? They concluded that same-sex marriage was not ultimately about expanding the pool of American couples eligible to marry. It was about cementing a new idea of marriage into the law — the very idea whose baleful effects they had spent years fighting. That idea, that romantic and emotional union is all that makes a marriage, could not explain (as anything other than sentiment or personal preference) or support the stabilizing norms of permanence, monogamy, and sexual exclusivity that make marriage fitting for family life. It could only weaken them. Indeed, it had already begun to do so. Disastrous policies such as no-fault divorce were motivated by the idea that a marriage is made by romantic attachment and satisfaction — and comes undone when these fade. The marriage movement’s leaders knew that to keep any footing for rebuilding the marriage culture, they had to fight the formal and final redefinition of marriage as essentially romantic companionship. Read more at the National Review.

U of Tennessee to feature lesbian bondage expert as part of $20,000 sex week

The University of Tennessee is set to spend $20,000 of student funds on a “sex week” beginning April 7, which will feature a “Golden Condom Scavenger Hunt” and an “interactive workshop” from self-described “lesbian BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, and Masochism) expert” Sinclair Sexsmith.

A flyer for the University of Tennessee's "sex week" that is set to include a lecture entitled "How Many Licks Does it Take…."

The Golden Condom Scavenger Hunt is described on the event’s official website as a campus-wide search for a golden condom.

“[T]he Sex Week Team will hide one golden condom on campus,” it reads. “Clever hints will be released daily. The retriever of this condom will win a prize!”

According to the event’s official website,the workshop, led by Sexsmith, will instruct participants on “how to turn up the heat on our own sex drive” and play with “butch/femme roles.”

Other events being hosted as a part of the week include two lectures given by sexologist Megan Andelloux that are named “Big Orange, Big…;)” and “How Many Licks Does it take….”

Sexsmith runs an online project known as the “Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Sex, Gender and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top.”  Her latest book is entitled Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica.

Read more at Campus Reform

Pro-Marriage is Pro-Life

How can you be pro-life unless you are also pro-marriage? I’ve been thinking about that question ever since I moved over from pro-life activism to pro-marriage activism. Since that transition, my conviction that the movements are essentially one has only been reinforced.

Pro-life is in my blood. My parents met at an event to welcome pro-life activists who had been recently bailed out of jail for conducting a peaceful sit-in at an abortion clinic. When I moved to Washington, D.C., five years ago, I knew I would be a pro-life activist, and so I was.

But as my activism matured, so did my conviction that the pro-life movement must become explicitly pro-marriage or risk its future. The Guttmacher Institute tells us that 85% of women who opt for abortion are unmarried. The community most afflicted by abortion, African-Americans, is also the community that suffers the lowest marriage rate.

Read more at Daily Caller.

Whither Men and Women?

By Danielle Charette

March 7, 2013  2 Comments and 0 Reactions

When did college students stop thinking and referring to themselves as “men” and “women”? My friends speak of meeting “boys” or, perhaps more slangily, “guys.” But our peers of the opposite sex almost never earn the basic social and biological honor of being called “men.” When did this linguistic shift happen? And why are we OK with it?

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m an English major, a conservative, or just a contrarian that I have a sincere problem with the way members of my generation refer to one another. For several years now, the U.S. legal system has recognized my age cohort as full-fledged adults. So why do we insist upon demeaning ourselves through our own way of speaking? If my friends are calling 21-year-old males “boys,” then surely those “boys” are reciprocating the favor, giving us the same label of girlishness we’ve held since elementary school.

There’s a lot of sociology out there on the so-called “Boomerang Generation,” mostly dealing with the fact that so many young people have delayed the major decisions that come with adulthood and opted to move back in with Mom and Dad. A critical mass of young adults are on-hold or regressing when it comes to responsibly embracing adulthood. Sure, conservatives can provide a number of explanations for this bleak phenomenon: the dismal job market, the student loan bubble, the decline of personal responsibility, helicopter-parenting styles, etc. All are legitimate concerns and contributing factors for our social-stalling.  But I wonder to what extent our own “guys” and “girls” discourse is holding us back.

Read more at Intercollegiate Review.

What would the Greeks have thought of gay marriage?

Robert R. Reilly | Monday, 11 March 2013

The great classical philosophers would have regarded it as an absurdity, despite their partial tolerance of homosexual love.

It is ironic that the proponents of homosexuality so often point to ancient Greece as their paradigm because of its high state of culture and its partial acceptance of homosexuality or, more accurately, pederasty. Though some ancient Greeks did write paeans to homosexual love, it did not occur to any of them to propose homosexual relationships as the basis for marriage in their societies. The only homosexual relationship that was accepted was between an adult male and a male adolescent. This relationship was to be temporary, as the youth was expected to get married and start a family as soon as he reached maturity.

The idea that someone was a “homosexual” for life or had this feature as a permanent identity would have struck them as more than odd. In other words, “homosexuality”, for which a word in Greek did not exist at the time (or in any other language until the late 19th century), was purely transitory. It appears that many of these mentoring relationships in ancient Greece were chaste and that the ones that were not rarely involved sodomy. Homosexual relationships between mature male adults were not accepted. This is hardly the idealized homosexual paradise that contemporary “gay” advocates harken back to in an attempt to legitimize behavior that would have scandalized the Greeks.

What is especially ironic is that ancient Greece’s greatest contribution to Western civilization was philosophy, which discovered that the mind can know things, as distinct from just having opinions about them, that objective reality exists, and that there is some purpose implied in its construction.

Read more at Mercator.Net.

“Bathroom Bill” Stinks

Posted onMarch 11th, 2013 Culture | 0 Comments and 4 Reactions

By Joseph LaRue, Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel

Recently the City Council of Phoenix, AZ, passed the “Bathroom Bill,” which, among other things, will allow men to enter and use women’s restrooms and locker rooms. The Mayor and five Council members who voted in favor of this change said it was necessary to protect the miniscule segment of men who are confused about their sexuality and think that they are women. But in passing the Bathroom Bill, the Mayor and City Council abdicated its duty to protect Phoenix’s children and women. Instead, it provided voyeurs and other sexual predators easy access to the places where children and women are most vulnerable. The City Council thus violated its public trust and placed children, adolescents, and women who use a public restroom in Phoenix at risk

Read more at Speak Up Movement.

100 Strong for Marriage     The first ever March for Marriage will take place in Washington, D.C. on March 26th, just in time for the Supreme Court to hear the oral arguments in the case that will decide the same-sex "marriage" question and determine whether Americans have the right to protect marriage.    Stand with us Students and supporters from across the country will be marching together under the banner of Love and Fidelity as 100 Strong for Marriage. We're working on arranging transportation for as many students as we can.For details click here and sign up to march with us.

Why the march?

On March 26th the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Perry case, which will determine if Proposition 8 - the citizens initiative approved by the people of California in 2008 to protect marriage - is constitutional or not. More importantly, the question of same-sex "marriage" and the right of Americans to protect marriage will be decided. We believe it is imperative that political leaders, the media, and the culture see that we care about protecting marriage enough to stand up and march for it. 40 years ago the Supreme Court decided that a major national policy debate - the debate about abortion - was "over" in Roe v. Wade. But in reality, public conversation on abortion has been anything but over. We need to show the justices of the Supreme Court - even those personally in favor of same-sex "marriage" - that a decision which would prematurely remove the marriage debate from the public square and allow national marriage policy to be decided by a few unelected individuals - would be met with the same response that Roe has met with over the last 40 years. It's up to us to be the living proof that a strong, vibrant marriage movement and culture not only exists, but is flourishing.

Schedule of Events March 26, 2013

08:30 AM: Gather at National Mall location between 10th Street and 12th Street NW and between Madison Drive NW and Jefferson Drive SW  09:30 AM: March to the Supreme Court and then return to the National Mall location  11:00 AM: Rally begins at National Mall location (live music, speakers and more) 01:00 PM: March for Marriage concludes Please note that this schedule is subject to change.

Join us!

If you'd like to join us,    We will arrange for buses and vans to travel from various starting points to Washington, D.C. early on the morning of the 26th and return that evening based on interest and availability.     We look forward to seeing many of you in a few short weeks!

Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It

By Ryan T. Anderson

March 11, 2013

Abstract

Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage; it rejects these truths. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. The future of this country depends on the future of marriage. The future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage.

At the heart of the current debates about same-sex marriage are three crucial questions: What is marriage, why does marriage matter for public policy, and what would be the consequences of redefining marriage to exclude sexual complementarity?

Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces. It is based on the anthropological truth that men and women are different and complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children need both a mother and a father. Marriage predates government. It is the fundamental building block of all human civilization. Marriage has public purposes that transcend its private purposes. This is why 41 states, with good reason, affirm that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits society in a way that no other relationship does. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other and take responsibility for their children. While respecting everyone’s liberty, government rightly recognizes, protects, and promotes marriage as the ideal institution for childbearing and childrearing.

Promoting marriage does not ban any type of relationship: Adults are free to make choices about their relationships, and they do not need government sanction or license to do so. All Americans have the freedom to live as they choose, but no one has a right to redefine marriage for everyone else.

In recent decades, marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view that is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs. This reduces marriage to a system to approve emotional bonds or distribute legal privileges.

Redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships is the culmination of this revisionism, and it would leave emotional intensity as the only thing that sets marriage apart from other bonds. Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and would deny, as a matter of policy, the ideal that a child needs both a mom and a dad. Decades of social science, including the latest studies using large samples and robust research methods, show that children tend to do best when raised by a mother and a father. The confusion resulting from further delinking childbearing from marriage would force the state to intervene more often in family life and expand welfare programs. Redefining marriage would legislate a new principle that marriage is whatever emotional bond the government says it is.

Redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage. It rejects the anthropological truth that marriage is based on the complementarity of man and woman, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage to abandon the norm of male–female sexual complementarity would also make other essential characteristics—such as monogamy, exclusivity, and permanency—optional. Marriage cannot do the work that society needs it to do if these norms are further weakened.

Redefining marriage is also a direct and demonstrable threat to religious freedom because it marginalizes those who affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman. This is already evident in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., among other locations.

Concern for the common good requires protecting and strengthening the marriage culture by promoting the truth about marriage.

Read more at the Heritage Foundation.

The Supreme Court's First Assault on Marriage

March 11th, 2013

The Supreme Court first put marriage on its track of decline forty-one years ago, when it ruled that states could not limit the sale of contraceptives to married couples.

This year, the Supreme Court will render judgment on the institution of marriage. Though most of us don’t realize it, the Court first did so forty-one years ago in Eisenstadt v. Baird, a decision that gravely wounded marriage and set the nation on a course of gradual debilitation by ruling that states could not restrict the sale of contraceptives to married people.

In its forthcoming decision, the Court may give marriage the legal coup de grace. Or it may surprise us, redeem itself, and use the occasion to correct the drift of legal thought on sexuality, marriage, and the rights of children. All three are inextricably linked.

In Eisenstadt, the Court overturned Massachusetts state law and pulled new sexual rights for singles out of a hat—but gave no standing to the child born of pre- or extra-marital sex. The Court played God by redefining the purpose of sexuality. In the process it unleashed sex’s destructive power detached from marriage. The Court could see rights to contraceptives in the “shadow” of the Constitution but could not see what a blind man could: the right of every child to married parents.

Having set chaos in motion in Eisenstadt, the Supreme Court quickly built the garbage bin for dumping sexual debris in Roe v. Wade, which gave a green light to the killing of 55 million unborn children, the overwhelming majority of whom were conceived by those unmarried singles with new access to contraceptives.

Read more at Public Discourse.