Marriage Union for the future or Contract for the Present, by Roger Scruton

Marriage Union for the future or Contract for the Present, by Roger Scruton

"Marriage is clearly a foundational and progressive institution. It is both traditional and radical: it secures well-being and manifest advantage for  the children born under its auspices, and stability and responsibility for men and women. However, traditional conjugal marriage is under threat, and has been so for many years. The steady erosion of marriage over the last few decades is a grave social and economic ill. We argue in this paper that what primarily threatens traditional marriage is simply another view of the meaning and role of marriage. The shifting conception of marriage from a conjugal to a ‘partnership’ model is what most endangers it.

Whereas conjugal marriage connects the bond between men and women to a future beyond themselves, both in respect of children and the needs of wider society, the partnership model is primarily about the people themselves. The conjugal and the partnership model represent two competing ideas of marriage. The first, the traditional and conjugal, extends beyond the individuals who marry to the children they hope to create and the society they wish to shape. The second is more contractual and restricted to the two individuals involved. We believe that the latter view represents a much weaker and narrower understanding of marriage.

Marriage is exclusively heterosexual because it concerns the union of the different sexes and, unlike same sex relationships, that union can and often does produce children. Conjugal marriage is first and foremost about the creation and care of children. It is about creating a public institution that celebrates and secures the right environment for the education and upbringing of children. The Bill undermines heterosexual marriage because it extends an institution that was designed exclusively for heterosexuals to non-heterosexuals. Just as Judaism would not survive an extension to non-Jews, or women’s refuges an open admission to men or charities to profit-making activity, so heterosexual marriage will not survive an extension to homosexuals."