Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Politics and Religion
Gay Marriage, the Rights of Children, and Religious Liberty

Gay Marriage, the Rights of Children, and Religious Liberty

Last updated on: December 27, 2014 at 11:51 am by Rebecca Hamilton

58 Comments

Gay Marriage, the Rights of Children, and Religious Liberty 2014-12-27T11:51:15-07:00 Rebecca Hamilton

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve received permission to reprint Ryan Anderson’s testimony concerning gay marriage in full. The video of his testimony is below the printed version of it.

I think Mr Anderson makes excellent points in this testimony.

Several commenters who responded to links to it in an earlier post made claims that gay marriage doesn’t change anything. In truth, wherever gay marriage has been legalized, there has been a concomitant attack on the conscience rights of small business people and individuals. We’ll explore that a bit next week.

In the meantime, the links Mr Anderson gives in the written version of his testimony also address those assertions.

From The Witherspoon Institute, courtesy of The Heritage Foundation:

I will be speaking today from the perspective of political science and philosophy to answer the question “What Is Marriage?” I’ve co-authored a book and an article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy with a classmate of mine from Princeton, Sherif Girgis, and with a professor of ours, Robert George. Justice Samuel Alito cited our book twice in his dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court case involving the Defense of Marriage Act.

The title of that book is “What Is Marriage?” An answer to that question is something we didn’t hear today from people on the other side. It’s interesting that we’ve had a three-hour conversation about marriage without much by way of answering that question.

Everyone in this room is in favor of marriage equality. We all want the law to treat all marriages equally. But the only way we can know whether any state law is treating marriages equally is if we know what a marriage is. Every state law will draw lines between what is a marriage and what isn’t a marriage. If those lines are to be drawn on principle, if those lines are to reflect the truth, we have to know what sort of relationship is marital, as contrasted with other forms of consenting adult relationships.

So, in the time I have today, I’ll answer three questions: what is marriage, why does marriage matter for public policy, and what are the consequences of redefining marriage?

Marriage exists to unite a man and a woman as husband and wife to then be equipped to be mother and father to any children that that union produces. It’s based on the anthropological truth that men and women are distinct and complementary. It’s based on the biological fact that reproduction requires a man and a woman. It’s based on the sociological reality that children deserve a mother and a father.

Whenever a child is born, a mother will always be close by. That’s a fact of biology. The question for culture and the question for law is whether a father will be close by. And if so, for how long? Marriage is the institution that different cultures and societies across time and place developed to maximize the likelihood that that man would commit to that woman and then the two of them would take responsibility to raise that child.

Part of this is based on the reality that there’s no such thing as parenting in the abstract: there’s mothering, and there’s fathering. Men and women bring different gifts to the parenting enterprise. Rutgers sociologist Professor David Popenoe writes, “the burden of social science evidence supports the idea that gender-differentiated parenting is important for human development and the contribution of fathers to childrearing is unique and irreplaceable.” He then concludes:

We should disavow the notion that mommies can make good daddies, just as we should the popular notion that daddies can make good mommies. The two sexes are different to the core and each is necessary—culturally and biologically—for the optimal development of a human being.

This is why so many states continue to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, many doing so by amending their constitutions.

So why does marriage matter for public policy? Perhaps there is no better way to analyze this than by looking to our own president, President Barack Obama. Allow me to quote him:

We know the statistics: that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

There is a host of social science evidence. We go through the litany and cite the studies in our book, but President Obama sums it up pretty well. We’ve seen in the past fifty years, since the war on poverty began, that the family has collapsed. At one point in America, virtually every child was given the gift of a married mother and father. Today, 40 percent of all Americans, 50 percent of Hispanics, and 70 percent of African Americans are born to single moms—and the consequences for those children are quite serious.

The state’s interest in marriage is not that it cares about my love life, or your love life, or anyone’s love life just for the sake of romance. The state’s interest in marriage is ensuring that those kids have fathers who are involved in their lives.

But when this doesn’t happen, social costs run high. As the marriage culture collapses, child poverty rises. Crime rises. Social mobility decreases. And welfare spending—which bankrupts so many states and the federal government—takes off.

If you care about social justice and limited government, if you care about freedom and the poor, then you have to care about marriage. All of these ends are better served by having the state define marriage correctly rather than the state trying to pick up the pieces of a broken marriage culture. The state can encourage men and women to commit to each other and take responsibility for their children while leaving other consenting adults free to live and to love as they choose, all without redefining the fundamental institution of marriage.

On that note, we’ve heard concerns about hospital visitation rights (which the federal government has already addressed) and with inheritance laws. Every individual has those concerns. I am not married. When I get sick, I need somebody to visit me in the hospital. When I die, I need someone to inherit my wealth. That situation is not unique to a same-sex couple. That is a situation that matters for all of us. So we need not redefine marriage to craft policy that will serve all citizens.

Lastly, I’ll close with three ways in which redefining marriage will undermine the institution of marriage. We hear this question: “how does redefining marriage hurt you or your marriage?” I’ll just mention three in the remaining time that I have.

First, it fundamentally reorients the institution of marriage away from the needs of children toward the desires of adults. It no longer makes marriage about ensuring the type of family life that is ideal for kids; it makes it more about adult romance. If one of the biggest social problems we face right now in the United States is absentee dads, how will we insist that fathers are essential when the law redefines marriage to make fathers optional?

Much of the testimony we have heard today was special interest pleading from big business claiming that defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman would make it hard for them to appeal to the elite college graduates from the East and the West coasts. We heard no discussion about the common good of the citizens of Indiana—the children who need fathers involved in their lives. Redefining marriage will make it much harder for the law to teach that those fathers are essential.

Second, if you redefine marriage, so as to say that the male-female aspect is irrational and arbitrary, what principle for policy and for law will retain the other three historic components of marriage? In the United States, it’s always been a monogamous union, a sexually exclusive union, and a permanent union. We’ve already seen new words created to challenge each and every one of those items.

“Throuple” is a three-person couple. New York Magazine reports about it. Here’s the question: if I were to sue and say that I demand marriage equality for my throuple, what principle would deny marriage equality to the throuple once you say that the male-female aspect of marriage is irrational and arbitrary? The way that we got to monogamy is that it’s one man and one woman who can unite in the type of action that can create new life and who can provide that new life with one mom and one dad. Once you say that the male-female aspect is irrational and arbitrary, you will have no principled reason to retain the number two.

Likewise, the term “wedlease” was introduced in the Washington Post in 2013. A wedlease is a play on the term wedlock. It’s for a temporary marriage. If marriage is primarily about adult romance, and romance can come, and it can go, why should the law presume it to be permanent? Why not issue expressly temporary marriage licenses?

And lastly, the term “monogamish.” Monogamish was introduced in the New York Times in 2011. The term suggests we should retain the number two, but that spouses should be free to have sexually open relationships. That it should be two people getting married, but they should be free to have sex outside of that marriage, provided there’s no coercion or deceit.

Now, whatever you think about group marriage, whatever you think about temporary marriage, whatever you think about sexually open marriage, as far as adults living and loving how they choose, think about the social consequences if that’s the future direction in which marriage redefinition would go. For every additional sexual partner a man has and the shorter-lived those relationships are, the greater the chances that a man creates children with multiple women without commitment either to those women or to those kids. It increases the likelihood of creating fragmented families, and then big government will step in to pick up the pieces with a host of welfare programs that truly drain the economic prospects of all of our states.

Finally, I’ll mention liberty concerns, religious liberty concerns in particular. After Massachusetts, Illinois, and Washington, DC, either passed a civil union law or redefined marriage, Christian adoption agencies were forced to stop serving some of the neediest children in America: orphans. These agencies said they had no problem with same-sex couples adopting from other agencies, but that they wanted to place the children in their care with a married mom and dad. They had a religious liberty interest, and they had social science evidence that suggests that children do best with a married mom and dad. And yet in all three jurisdictions, they were told they could not do that.

We’ve also seen in different jurisdictions instances of photographers, bakers, florists, and innkeepers, people acting in the commercial sphere, saying we don’t want to be coerced. And that’s what redefining marriage would do. Redefining marriage would say that every institution has to treat two people of the same sex as if they’re married, even if those institutions don’t believe that they’re married. So the coercion works in the exact opposite direction of what we have heard.

Everyone right now is free to live and to love how they want. Two people of the same sex can work for a business that will give them marriage benefits, if the business chooses to. They can go to a liberal house of worship and have a marriage ceremony, if the house of worship chooses to. What is at stake with redefining marriage is whether the law would now coerce others into treating a same-sex relationship as if it’s a marriage, even when doing so violates the conscience and rights of those individuals and those institutions.

So, for all of these reasons, this state and all states have an interest in preserving the definition of marriage as the union—permanent and exclusive—of one man and one woman.

Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and the Editor of Public Discourse. He is co-author, with Sherif Girgis and Robert George, of the book What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, and is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Notre Dame.

http://youtu.be/3TNmKo5KcMY

the rights of children

Previous Post

January 16, 2014

Oklahoma Fails the Test and I Am Proud Of It!

Next Post

January 18, 2014 Are Gay Rights Activists Nazis, and Other Coffee Through the Nose Questions

Recent Comments

58 Comments | Leave a Comment

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Commandments 2012 Election 2016 Election 2020 Election 2022 Election 2024 Election Abortion Addiction Adult Day Care Advent Africa AI Alcoholism Alex Pretti Renee Good America American Citizenship American Fascism Announcement Anti Semitism Anti-Semitism Apologetics Archbishop Coakley Argentina Armenian Genocide Ash Wednesday Ballot Box Salvation Biden Big Beautiful Bill Bishop Black Mass Blasphemy Boko Haram Book Review Brainwashing Breast Cancer Bribery Calling Evil Good calling good evil Cancer Canonize Caregiving Catholic Catholic Vote Cause for Sainthood Chaos child abuse Child Labor Child Rearing Child Sacrifice Christian Bashers Christian Leadership Christian Persecution Christian Solidarity Christianity Christmas clergy Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Climate Coakley Common Good Communion Communism Computers concentration camps Conclave Confession Consecration to Our Lady Conversion Coptic Christians Coronavirus Corporatism Corruption COVID Crisis Pregnancy Centers Culture D Day Death Death Penalty Dementia Democracy Designer Baby Destruction of the Family Dictator Dignity of Work Divine Mercy Novena Divine Mercy Sunday Divorce Doubt Drug Addiction easter Ebola Economics Education Egg Harvesting El Salvador Elderly Epiphany Epstein eternal life Eternal Life Eucharist Eugenics Euthanizing Children Euthansia evangelization Excommunicate Biden Extraterrestrial Life Failed Clergy Faith False Gods Family Fascism Fatherhood Feast of the Assumption First Amendment Flood the Zone Following Christ forced conversion Forgiveness Fortnight4Freedom fourth amendment Fr James Altman Fr Stanley Rother free press Freedom Freedom of Conscience freedom of religion Freedom of Speech Freedom of Worship vs Religious Freedom Geek Stuff Gender Theory Genocide God the Father Good Friday Gossip GQP Greenland Grief Gun Control Gun Violence Hate Blogs Health Health Care Heart Attack Heaven Hell Herod HHS Mandate History of the Crusades Holy Father Holy Father' Holy Father's Tweets Holy Matrimony Holy Saturday Holy Spirit Holy Thursday Holy Week Home Homeschooling homosexual Hospice Human Dignity Human Rights human trafficking Humor ICE Idolatry Immaculate Conception Immigration Incest Infertility Inspiration Iran War ISIS Islam Islamic Brotherhood Israel JD Vance Jesus Jobs Jordan Judas Judicial and Legislative Murder Judicial Murder July 4 Just War Justice Kavanaugh Ketanji Jackson Brown Laity Latin Mass Leadership Lent Less of Me Lying Lying for Trump Mad King MAGA Magnifica humanitas Mama Marriage Marriage Protection Amendment Martyr Media Bias Medicaid Men and Abortion Mercy Military Dictatorship Misogyny Motherhood Movie Review Murder Music National Catholic Register Nazi Clergy Neo Nazis New Category New Evangelism New Evangelization News Headlines Nigeria No Kings Novena for the Persecuted Church Nuns Obama Oklahoma Oscar Romero Our Lady Our National Embarrassment Pakistan Palm Sunday Papal Conclave Papal G8 Pedophile piano political priests Political Whore Clergy Politics Polygamy Pope Francis Pope Francis Visit United States Pope Leo XIV Pope's Prayer Intentions Pornography Post Christian West Poverty Prayer Prayers for the Persecuted Church Pro Life Prophecy Prostitution Purgatory Putin Quack Medicine Racism Rape Religious Freedom Renee Good Republican Republican priests Rerum Novarum Retirement Risen Lord Roe v Wade Rosary Sacrament Sacred Heart Sacrilege Saints Salvation Same Sex Marriage Sanctity of Human Life Satan Save Our Democracy scandal Scripture Shroud of Turin Sisters Slavery Social Justice Social Security Solidarity Cross St Michael the Archangel stations of the cross Stop Late Term Abortion Stroke Suicide Supreme Court Surrogacy Surveillance State Synod Syria Taliban Tariffs Taxes Technology Thanksgiving The Ascension The Cross The Locust Class The Political Heresy The Resurrection The Tomb The Transfiguration The Trinity The War on Girls Tornado Trauma Trump Trump Coup Trump Destroying America Trump's Coup Trump's War on the Rule of Law Trumpism Ukraine Uncategorized USAID USCCB Vatican Vatican Reform Violence Against Women Violence in America Vocation Voting Rights Wages Walk for Life War Weight Loss White House Why Aren't You a Feminist Too? Woke Women Leaders Women's Rights Worker's Rights World Hunger World War I World War III World Youth Day Worship Writing Year of Faith

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 March 2024 February 2024 November 2023 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 October 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 August 2016 May 2016 April 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 January 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said: "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

An angel Jesus (to the church in Ephesus) The Spirit John