[You can watch video of this testimony
here.]
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.
- See more at: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/01/11880/#sthash.FceQFwnj.dpuf
