as we head into the next session it is my pleasure to introduce to you Ryan Anderson who is here to speak with us on the question What is marriage Ryan is the William E Simon fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC and he's also the founder and editor of the public discourse which is the online Journal of the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton New Jersey and I'm just going to throw in a little aside here in his bio because I'm one of the people who I write for the public discourse sometimes and I just want to point out that Ryan is also somebody in addition to his academic uh study skills and his speaking skills he has really great editing skills so he's been a pleasure to work with he is the co-author of the book What is marriage man and woman a defense together with Professor Robert George of Princeton University and Sharie gergus who is here with us today who will be leading one of the breakout sessions in the afternoon Ryan received his bachelor's degree from Princeton University and he graduated fi Beta Kappa and Magna kumla he is a doctoral candidate right now in political philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and his research focuses on social justice issues Ryan has especially in the past few months had a vast range of media experiences more than I can list this morning uh Piers Morgan Live which some of you may have seen CNN Fox News MSNBC and his work has appeared in the New York Times in the Washington Post in the Wall Street Journal and many more so it's going to be my pleasure to turn the microphone over to Ryan and after Ryan's talk we'll have time for Q&A um and just a reminder we'd really like to focus that time on questions I think to take advantage of the opportunity we have with speakers who are here today thank you so much and please welcome Ryan Anderson thank [Applause] you thank you uh thank you all for having me I think the the first place to start is by thanking uh Judy and Irene and all the students at Stanford who made this event possible um it's only because of them that we're [Applause] here and they really serve as uh role models for students on all campuses on how to make a conference like this take place even in the face of a hostile uh campus environment um it's good that we're having this meeting at a university that means I get to speak from a Podium rather than a seat in the audience um it's frequently what happens on the cable TV shows it's also good that we're at a university because it means we're not going to engage in the type of name calling and empty sloganeering that also takes place on the TV talk shows um too many people on both sides of this marriage debate um resort to uh empty platitudes and empty sloganeering and to name calling in a way that's rather unhelpful and rather uh Unbecoming of uh civility so with that let me say three things that I'm not going to say in the time that we have together this morning I I think Professor breski has already touched on most of these things so I don't uh need to I'm not going to say anything about morality anything about theology or anything about tradition um there are some people who talk about marriage and talk about the same-sex marriage debate in terms of a moral argument in terms of a theological argument in terms of a traditional argument that a burky and conservative might say because marriage has been this way this is how it ought to be none of those are arguments will be one that I'll be making I'll be making a philosophical argument with some appeal to social science largely to get at a public policy purpose of marriage the question that I want to ask and then answer is What is marriage from a policy perspective what is the state's interest in marriage how does the state define marriage how should the state define marriage and why now I would imagine that everyone in this room is in favor of marriage equality the the other side uses that slogan and it's a great slogan and it's a wonderful piece of advertising it fits on a bumper sticker um you can put an equal sign up as your Facebook icon and yet it's completely vacuous um everyone in this room is for marriage equality we all want the law to treat all marriages equally what we may disagree with one another in this room about is what sort of relationship is a marriage um so the book that Sharie and Professor George and I co-authored was titled What is marriage because that's the question that you have to answer before you can then get to considerations of equality and if you're a lawyer before you can get to considerations of equal protection of the law you have to know what it is that the law is trying to protect equally so what is the marital relationship because even those who want to redefine marriage to include the same-sex couple will draw certain lines draw certain lines between what sort of a relationship is a marriage what sort of a relationship is not a marriage and if we're going to draw lines that are based on principle if we're going to draw lines that reflect the truth we have to know what sort of a relationship is a marriage and what sort of other consenting adult relationships are non-marital so that's what I'm going to try to get at in the time that we have here this morning now when we were doing research for the article and then for the book uh we tried to read the best philosophers and political theorists who were arguing in favor of redefining marriage um we wanted to see on their account of marriage what is their definition um and one of the uh philosophers that we looked to is John Corino he's become a friend of Sharif and mine and he was saying what really is distinctive about marriage is it establishes your relationship with your number one person and what sets marriage apart from other relationships is the priority of the relationship it's your most important relationship again because it's your number one person that the marital relationship establishes uh so what sets marriage apart from other relationship will be the intensity of the emotional bond the priority of the emotional commitment my Cs and I think this simp simply gets marriage wrong because it collapses marriage with companionship in general it simply makes it the most important companionship relationship the one that takes priority the one that's the most intense and so it can't actually account for any of the distinctive features of what marriage requires nor can it explain why government should be in the intense companionship business why is government in the marriage business if this is what marriage is so let me say a few words about that uh and I'll place a challenge to to people in the audience when we get to the Q&A I invite you to give an answer to these questions of if you want to redefine marriage to include the same-sex couple why would marriage how you understand it require that that relationship be permanent monogamous and exclusive and be the type of relationship that a government takes interest in because on this account of marriage where marriage is an intense emotional Union of consenting adults that's something that can be formed by more than two people there's nothing about intense emotional Union just as such that says it has to be between two and only two three sums and four sums can just as easily form an intense emotional an intense romantic an intense caregiving relationship there's nothing in principle that would require twos likewise there's nothing about that Union that would say it has to be sexually exclusive some people might argue that you could actually have an enhanced emot Union and enhance caregiving relationship if spouses were free to seek sexual satisfaction outside of marriage and then lastly there would be no reason in principle why the union should be permanent since emotions come and go love waxes and waines so what would demand the pledge of permanency but then lastly why would government even be in the marriage business on this definition of what marriage is if marriage is just about The Love Lives of consenting adults why can't we take the state out of the bedroom and yet those who would redefine marriage want to put the government into more bedrooms why so that's the question answer the title question of our book What is marriage in a way that can account for the distinctive marital norms and can explain why marriage is a distinct public policy issue in the first place so having said that having uh said a little bit about why we think uh the opposing view fails let me construct our argument about marriage and I'm going to do this in three steps uh first I'm going to say what we think marriage is from a philosophical perspective next I'll say why we think marriage Matters from a policy perspective and then lastly I'll say three things about likely consequences of redefining marriage so those will be the three broad uh points that the outline of the talk what is marriage why does marriage matter what are the consequences of redefining marriage we take our bearings from Aristotle in our article and in our book in how to analyze any sort of a community Aristotle tells us that you can analyze any Community by looking at the actions that the community engages in the goods that the community seeks and then the Norms of commitment that shape that community's common life together so to take a non-controversial example let's take a university community a university community the members of the community engage in academic action what sort of things are academic actions your professors will research and write academic articles and academic books they'll then put these on the syllabi not just to get their commission from having you buy their overpriced textbooks but also that you can then read the benefit of all the hours of research that they put in while writing their dissertation and researching for their next scholarly publication so students read articles and read books professors then deliver lectures students attend lectures and take notes students then write term papers professors then grade term papers students come to office hours and discuss their papers with their professors these are the sorts of activities that constitute an academic Community as an academic Community beer pong and football games are nice additions but they don't go to the heart of what makes a university a university what goes to the heart are these intellectual activities now what are these intellectual activities is ultimately seeking what is the good that these are oriented towards they're oriented towards the good of the truth they're oriented towards the good of knowledge all the exercises that your professors make you engage in the homework assignments the term papers the research projects all of the work that they themselves do in writing those books and papers and delivering those lectures is all about eliminating ignorance from our lives and coming to a better appropriation of the truth of the matter so that we can have a better understanding of what is really true so that we're not living in ignorance we're not living in Superstition uh we're not living with just preconceived opinions that's what all these actions are oriented towards oriented towards the good of knowledge the good of the truth so then lastly what sort of commitments does this require of a university community this is where all the commitments for academic integrity and academic freedom and uh the honor code come into play this is why you can't plagiarize your term papers this is why you you have to cite all of your sources this is why if you're a scientist you want to cite all of the data not just the data that might support your hypothesis you want to site some of you want to cite all of the data including the data that might call it into question because if another researcher comes along and then writes a review of your paper and says wait here are some of the weak spots here's an alternative way of analyzing the data you don't view it as an attack you view it actually as something liberating they've corrected a mistake in your argument they've helped you see the fullness of Truth helped you eliminate a piece of ignorance out of your life this is why when your paper when your professors make comments on your papers you shouldn't view it as an attack you should view it as they're trying to help you to write better papers so that you can better understand the truth okay so that's how a university ought to exist unfortunately that this isn't always true on college campuses but we can use that same basic framework to analyze what makes the marital relationship marital what makes marriage different than other forms of community what makes the marriage Community different than the football team and different than the university and my Cs and I say marriage is a comprehensive relationship and it's comprehensive in exactly those three ways it's comprehensive in the act that unite spouses it's comprehensive in the goods that the spouses are inherently ordered towards and it's comprehensive in the Norms of commitment that it requires from the spouses let me say a few more words more about each one of those three points um Professor rudki did a wonderful job of explaining how we're mindbody unities we're not ghosts and machines we're not Souls that are somehow inhabiting Flesh and Bones but we're a Mind Body Unity so to unite with some someone at a comprehensive way we have to unite with them at all levels of their personhood so this act that unites us comprehensively will be an act that unites us Hearts minds and bodies and now the good that it orients us to won't be some particular singular good like the good of winning the next football game or the good of passing the next test it'll be a comprehensive good and we argue that that comprehensive good is what Professor Bry mentioned as procreation understood as both the creation and then the rearing of whole new human organisms who are going to be raised to participate in all of the forms of human goodness it it sets the trajectory of that marital relationship on this comprehensive plain and then lastly it calls for a comprehensive commitment a commitment of both permanency and exclusivity so that it's comprehensive throughout time and it's comprehensive at this moment of time by forsaking all others this is the most dense part of this morning's talk um so if you're having trouble it will get much easier after this it'll get faster it'll be much more humorous and entertaining and enjoyable um I promise but let me say a few more words because this actually is getting to the the Bedrock of our argument this gets to the core and it's something that our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents just took for granted um and so putting it into Aristotelian terminology uh fleshing it out um requires some work from what used to be common sense but let me say a little bit more what is it how to to do the uh the analysis of the comprehensive act that spouses engage in how is it that two people can unite comprehensively we said that we want this to be a act that will unite us at all levels of our personhood so a union of Hearts minds and bodies Professor breski pointed out that with most respects all respects except one we're complete as individuals with respect to Locomotion I can get up and walk across this platform on my own with respect to digestion when we're done and we have lunch I'm going to be able to eat my meal and digest it just fine as an individual with respect to circulation uh respiratory system all of those things were complete with respect to one biological function we're radically incomplete he mentioned it's the function of procreation so that in that conjugal act a man and a woman don't just rub up against each other or interlock as if I was to stick my finger in one of your ears they truly form a two-in-one flesh Union it's a single function a single organism that's being formed by a mated pair it's a single biological purpose that the Tome performs together as a unity and so in the same way that you could say what is it about my body that makes me an individual what is it about me that makes my muscles and my heart and my lungs and my stomach and my intens not just a clump of cells but makes them a Unity is that they're all coordinating with each other they're interacting with each other towards a single unified biological end the good of my continued exist in the same way that man and that woman when they unite in that conjugal act are coordinating towards a single unified biological purpose that good of procreation and so the Hebrew scriptures when it describes them in that act as a twoin one flesh Union they're not just speaking poetically or metaphorically they're revealing something true about human nature and about what the sexual complimentarity of a man and a woman allows for in terms of an act that can unite them and now this act unites them so completely that nine months later it frequently requires a name the love making Act is also the lifegiving act the act that unites a man and a woman as husband and wife is the same act that can make them mother and father and so that begins to tell us something about what the marital relationship is or ordered towards you know what is the orientation the orderedness the good that the marital relationship seeks in the same way that academic communities engage in academic actions that are ordered towards the pursuit of the truth and knowledge it's the marital relationship spouses engage in a marital act that is intrinsically ordered towards both their unity and the procreation and then the rearing and education of children so it's a comprehensive action that unites them Hearts minds and bodies that then orients them towards a comprehensive good the procreation the rearing the education the raising of new human beings and then lastly this can explain why marriage requires comprehensive commitments both exclusive and permanent and now what sort of exclusivity does marriage call for it's sexual exclusivity you don't cheat on your spouse by attending with someone other than your spouse you don't cheat on your spouse by playing football with someone other than your spouse but you do cheat on your spouse when you sleep with someone other than your spouse and this view of what marriage is can explain why the type of exclusivity that marriage calls for is sexual exclusivity because it's the sexual act that transforms an ordinary friendship a union of hearts and Minds into the comprehensive domain of of marriage it transforms it into that comprehensive Union of Hearts minds and bodies and so the conjugal act which is distinctive of marriage which is why it's called the marital Act is the act that is exclusively reserved for the spouses and that's the type of exclusivity that marriage requires none of you are being unfaithful to your spouses by being at this lecture so then so then we can say what about the other comprehensive commitment it's a comprehensive commitment that will require a permanent commitment and I think again Professor breski spoke very well about this to give a total gift of the self requires that you don't hold anything back if you have a sunset Clause if you have an escape date if you have a way out then you're not really uniting comprehensively to unite comprehensively requires an open-ended commitment so the type of comprehensive Union that's being formed requires an exclusive forsaking all others Here and Now now but also into the future comprehensive throughout time and comprehensive at this moment in time this basic view of marriage that we run on Aristotelian uh grounds and using some Aristotelian jargon is something though that we find in the ancient thinkers um not just the Christians but Socrates Plato Aristotle Cicero muus Rufus it's something that we then find in the canon law the common law and the civil law of the church common law of England civil law of America it's something that we see in thinkers like Augustine and aquinus Luther and Calvin but also Enlightenment thinkers like Lo Kant Eastern thinkers like Gandhi so what this suggests to my co-authors is while everyone has a slightly different phraseology a different way of putting the point they have differences around the margins Professor Ry mentioned that for lock marriage need not require permanency that after the children are grown divorce may not in every case be immoral but it still has an expectation of permanency for lock what this suggests to us is that there's something about the human good of marriage that different political philosophical and Theological communities have all been trying to articulate with greater or lesser success that it's a bunch of different thinkers in different times and places have all been grappling with the same human reality of marriage what is it about our nature embodied males and females the type of Union we can form the type of good that that Union can produce and the type of commitments that it requires and that's what we're trying to articulate here and now so that our marriage policy can reflect that truth and to promote that truth and so that leads us into the second part of my talk this morning why does marriage matter because you could say all right Ryan that's fine and good you shareif and Robbie have articulated a distinctive type of human good this comprehensive good that you call marriage why should anyone care why should the state in particular care why should the state of California why should the nation state why should politics care about this form of friendship this form of relationship this form of community so let me say a few words about that I work at a public policy think tank so this is where I do spend a bit of my time and attention I think from a policy Vantage Point marriage exists to unit a man and a woman as husband and wife so then they're then equipped to be mother and father to any children that that Union produces it's based on an anthropological truth that men and women are distinct and complimentary it's based on the biological fact that reproduction requires a man and a woman it's based on the social reality that children deserve both a mother and a father whenever a child is born a mother will be close by she's normally in the same room that's a fact of biology the question for culture and so therefore the question for policy is will a father be close by and if so for how long and marriage is the institution that different societies throughout time and across the globe have devised to maximize the likelihood that that man commits to that woman permanently and exclusively and then the two of them committed to one another take responsibility to raise that child because when this doesn't happen social costs both for the spouses and for the child and for all of the community run high but before getting to the cost let me say one more thing about why that Union matters one of the things we know from the social scientists is that there's no such thing as parenting 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 and so in our book we quote David poeno a sociologist at the University of at Rutter's University in New Jersey he says quote the burden of social science evidence supports the idea that gender differentiated parenting is important for human development and that the contribution of fathers to child rearing is unique and irreplaceable end quote he then concluded and this was in a literature review of all of the social science at that point he says we should disavow the notion that mommies can make good daddies just as we should disavow 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 end quote and now a sociology professor of social scientists like this is always speaking in terms of on average for the most part um social science laws are not like um physical laws the law of gravity uh I can guarantee you that if I let go of this water bottle and every time and place it's going to fall to the ground um social science doesn't work that tightly um so this isn't to say and I think this would get to Professor Lopez's question earlier to Professor breski that there will be instances in which two moms or two dads or a single mother or a single father or divorce and cohabiting relationship all sorts of other arrangements a child could turn out just fine no one is denying that possibility but it do to say that on average and for the most part children who grow up without their married mother and father have a tougher road to hoe that there are distinct challenges for a child in that situation but let me say a word more about the parenting what was Professor popo trying to get at when he says that we should disavow the notion that mommies can make good daddies and that daddies can make good mommies um let's do this with a thought experiment if I told you at Saturday morning and instead of being at an academic conference at Stanford a 5-year-old boy is at home in the living room rest wrestling with one of his parents and this parents is teaching the 5-year-old to be masculine without being violent that it's okay to put people in headlocks but not to pull hair or bite or to gouge out eyes which parent is most likely on average and for the most part in the living room yeah the laughter suggests that you know where I'm going with this well an average and for the most part that's going to be the father and it's not because we have a gender stereotype in which only fathers can wrestle on living room floors is because this is what comes naturally to dads it's something that on average and for the most part fathers enjoy doing with their 5-year-old sons in a way that mothers don't and it's not to say that mothers can't wrestle on living room floors but it's said on average for the most part they'd rather not um in the same way that you could see that it's normally the father that's throwing the baby up in the air while the mother is saying honey not so high and I think this gets at exactly what professor budki said mothers tend to be the more nurturing the more protecting um the more the caregiving relationship in the marital relationship the mother tends to be that more nurturing one and it's not to say that fathers can't be nurturing but men tend not to be very sensitive on average and for the most part that's the way these things break down so then if that's the kind of thought experiment about Saturday morning in the living room floor we can step back and just analyze the social science what we know from the social science is that Saturday morning wrestling session and then five years later playing catch in the backyard and then five years after that discussing how to go to your first High School dance that that matters and the father is doing something for his son because boys who grow up without their fathers much more likely to commit crime and to end up in jail what's taking place with the father wrestling on the living room floor with his son is exactly channeling of those masculine aggressions that sometimes can take a destructive turn if you don't learn how to be physical without biting and pulling hair and ey gouging when you're five When You're 15 those same Temptations might take you in a direction that ends up being criminal and that's one of the things that fathers distinctively do for their boys now fathers do something distinctive and complimentary for their daughters it tends to be the father who scares away the bad boyfriend and this isn't because mothers can't scare away bad boyfriends but it's because the father tends to be a little bit larger than the mother his voice tends to be a little bit deeper than the mothers and he also was once a boy himself and he knows what the wrong sort of young man might be looking for in his daughter and so he tends to be a little more sensitive about not letting his daughter go out with the wrong sort of boy and like Professor veski mentioned the father who's married to his daughter's mother is also modeling what a good male female relationship looks like and so he's modeling for his daughter which she should be looking for in the right sort of boyfriend who could become the right sort of husband that's one of the things that a father who is married to his daughter's mother does for his daughter so then when we take a step back and we look at the social science girls who grow up without their fathers are more likely to suffer or to experience an outof wedlock pregnancy because that father is the one who's more often than not policing her sexual relationships so right you could say that's F and good you've given us um these thought experiments and you've told us a little bit about the consequences do you have any hard data let me read you a quote and then I'll ask you to tell me who spoke this quote quote we know the statistics that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and to commit crime nine times more likely to drop out of school and 20 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 end quote who spoke that President Obama Piers Morgan was a good second guess President Obama now President Obama will be the first to tell you that growing up without a father doesn't mean that you're somehow destined and doomed for failure in life he seems to be doing pretty well for himself but he would also be the first to tell you that his road was tougher he had a steeper Hill to climb and this is one of the reasons why he's spoken out on the importance of fathers because he's seen what it has done to so many children who grow up without their dad it's why he has spoken about being how important it is for him to be a good father to his two daughters he's experienced firsthand the importance of fathers and it inspires him to be a good father and I don't think in any way did this is suggest that single mothers are somehow anything less than heroic frequently single mothers are the most heroic members of our Society um when the father who abandoned the mother and abandoned the child left them they were the ones left to take responsibility and they do a heroic job in raising their kids and frequently they would also be the first to tell you that they wish that man would have manned up committed to them and committed to the child and so I don't want to suggest in any way that this is to criticize other people but it is to say that marriage matters and that the state has an interest in promoting marriage precisely to maximize the likelihood that every child is given the gift of being raised by a married mother and father and at one point in American history this happened we had outof wedlock childbearing rates in single digits up until the 1960s more or less every child was born into and raised by their married mother and father and then in the past 50 years we've seen those numbers progressively decline so that today 40% of all Americans 50% of Hispanics and 70% of African-Americans are born outside of marriage and these children have done nothing wrong but they will have a much tougher um chance in life because what we know is that marriage is the institution that when it's stable it protects children from poverty it increases the likelihood of those children will experience social Mobility it protects children from committing crime and it prevents the state from having to pick up the pieces in the form of a welfare program or a police program so more or less everything that you could care about if you care about social justice and you care about limited government if you care about the poor and you care about freedom is better served by having a healthy marriage culture a civil society institution that takes care of raising that next Generation than by having the government try to pick up the pieces of a broken marriage culture that's why marriage matters so now to the uh third and final part of this morning presentation what are the consequences of redefining marriage because you could say all right I'm tracking with you this is what marriage is it's the comprehensive Union spouses engage in a comprehensive act orator towards a comprehensive good they commit to comprehensive commitments it matters because that Union of a man and a woman can produce a child children deserve a mother and a father fine and good but how does allowing Adam and Steve get married impact any of this how would redefining marriage to include same-sex couples in any way uh take away from the public purpose of marriage it's a good question it's the next logical question and let me say three things in response in all three of my comments here will follow the general rubric of ideas have consequences and bad ideas have bad consequences and so for the first consequence I'll say is that if you were to redefine marriage to eliminate the norm of sexual complimentarity there would be no no institution left in civil society and in public life that upheld even as an ideal that every child deserves both a mother and a father the message that redefining marriage to make it a genderless institution would send is that men and women are interchangeable that mothers and fathers are substitutional and that two moms or two dads is the same thing as a married mom and a dad so the law would be teaching something about marriage and it would be teaching that marriage is much more about the desires of adults than about the needs of children it reenters the marital relationship around adult romance adult emotion as I mentioned at the beginning the priority of the intense emotional Union of the adult rather than about the type of institution that can create new life and then unite that new life with the man and the woman who gave him or her new life and if you doubt that the law has the power to teach like this think about how we redefine marriage the first time with the introduction of no fault divorce in the common law tradition marriage had a strong presumption of permanency but on certain occasions under certain conditions you could receive a bill of divorce and in the common law there were the Three A's of abuse abandonment and adultery serious reasons for declaring your marriage to have to end to have to cease my spouse is abusing me my spouse has abandoned me my my spouse has committed adultery on me those were the types of reasons that would take a marital relationship that was expected to be permanent till death do us part and declare it over with the intruction of no fault divorce a spouse could now abandon his or her spouse for any reason or for no reason at all that's the idea behind no fault divorce you don't have to cite fault and what we saw was that divorce rates nearly actually more than doubled they've s lowered just a little bit because the law taught something the law taught that marriage need not even aspire to be permanent that you can get out of a marriage for trivial reasons you can get out of a marriage for no reason and the law shapes culture our culture then shapes our beliefs and our beliefs then shape our actions this is the pedagogical function of law the law functions as a teacher and so what the law would be teaching here is that marriage is mainly about adult romance not about stable family life for creating and then raising children and if you think about the statistics I mentioned just a moment ago 40% of all Americans 50% of Hispanics 70% of African-Americans born to single mothers and then all of the social costs that come with that in terms of child poverty decreased social Mobility increased crime decreased um or increased welfare spending it suggested me that the most pressing social problem in America right now is the problem of absentee fathers but how will we insist that fathers are essential when the law is teaching that fathers are optional and that's the question for President Obama after he evolved on marriage when you read back to him that quote about the importance of fathers how can he insist and have the law send that message that fathers are essential when he now supports redefining marriage to make fathers optional so that's the first consequence of redef finding marriage it changes the meaning of marriage and it changes what the law will teach about marriage which will in turn change what people believe about marriage and which will in turn shape how people live out marriage second consequence is that there is no reason to think that redefining marriage would stop here and in fact we now have three new words that describe the ways in which marriage activists would like to see marriage further redefin mind and here just think back 20 years ago maybe on this campus it wouldn't have been Unthinkable but in most America 20 years ago the phrase samesex marriage was an oxymoron if it's samex it's not marriage so 20 years ago most Americans didn't really think that a same-sex marriage was even an ontological possibility in the same way now we have three new words that have been coined in prominent liberal Publications and to me there is no logical reason once you get rid of the male female aspect for why these further redefinitions don't simply follow like night follows day so let me run through these briefly the first is the term thle a thle is a three-person couple you chop off the C and you add on a thrr thle and my co-authors and I came across this term in New York Magazine New York Magazine is a fairly standard issue magazine of thought for New Yorkers it's a left leaning publication and what's standard in New York today will become standard in the rest of America 20 years from now and the argument here is that uh this is not a polygamous relationship a polygamous relationship would be one man with this woman in a conjugal relationship the same man with a different woman in a conjugal relationship the same man with a third woman in a conal relationship here it's a it's a group marriage this is an instance of poly Amory uh many loves and the idea here is the threple all three partners are married to each other and poly am can come in different sizes and shapes you got have a forsome where they're all married to one another whereas the forsome I just mentioned it's one man with three different women in three different conjugal relationships the polyamorous relationship will just be a group marriage and the general idea is that if marriage is just about an intense emotional Union spouses have romantic feelings for each other and then pledge to take care of each other they co-mingle assets they live together they enjoy economies of scale and they love one another so the other convenient but empty slogan is that love equals love why isn't the thruple in the same exact situation as the couple and so if you go to court and say we are suing for our marriage equality rights for the same-sex couple on what basis would you deny marriage equality to the same seex thruple or the opposite sex courtet because the way that we arrived at monogamy in Western Law and culture is that it's one man and one woman who can unite in the comprehensive act that produces new life and every new life has one mother and one father and marriage is about uniting those people into a stable family life but once you say the male female aspect of marriage is irrational and arbitrary and bigoted what is magical about the number two what is the principled reason for denying marriage equality to threes and fours and more so that's the thruple the next term we came across was the term monogamish and this was in the New York Times in the Sunday magazine there's probably no publication more prominent in terms of mainstream liberal thought than the New York Times Sunday magazine and this was in a profile of the gay rights activist Dan Savage and in a portion of that profile uh the question was asked what do you think straight couples will learn from gay couples once there's same-sex marriage so how will gay marriage actually help traditional marriage and he says what it will teach and what straight couples could learn is the virtue of the monogamish relationship the term monogamish is a play on the word monogamous so Savage seems to be inclined to want to keep the trome requirement but he wants to get rid of the sexual exclusive requirement he thinks that sexual exclusivity is outdated and inhumane it's an unrealistic expectation to think that you could have all of your sexual needs fulfilled by one person for the rest of your life and that this is what's wrong with uh heterosexual marriage and that this is one of the things that heterosexual could learn from homosexuals is the virtue of monogamish and so he says that provided it's an open and honest discussion where the spouses agree to it there's no coercion and there's no deceit spouses should be free to have a sexually open relationship and he says that frequently this will actually enhance their emotional bond that one of the reasons that lead to divorces are that spouses are not having their sexual needs fulfilled inside of marriage and so they seek sexual Outlets outside of marriage and because they had this unrealistic expectation of sexual exclusivity when the other spouse finds out about it their heart's broken this was adultery and then they file for divorce he says much better that we not link adultery to sexual exclusivity so long as you're open and honest about it no one's heart would be broken if you said it's okay to seek out a sexual relationship outside of marriage that's the monogamish relationship and then the final term that we came across was the term wed leas wed Le is a play on the word wedlock uh wedlock suggests something that is strong and sturdy and permanent wedley stands for the exact opposite and this was a term that was introduced in the Washington Post The Washington Post app Ed page is probably the most moderate of liberal Publications and it was published the month after the Supreme Court ruled on the defensive Marriage Act case so the timing was convenient it was a lawyer writing and he was saying just like you can lease a car or you can lease a house you should be able legally to lease a spouse and the argument here was that he might want to keep the tuome requirement he might even want to keep the sexual exclusive requirement he thought the per requirement was unrealistic and inhumane and that the reason that divorce caused so much heartbreak and so much disruption is that spouses had an unrealistic expectation that they were going to live and love one other person for the rest of their life and when this proved to be impossible that's when it causes the trouble but if you only signed up for a wed lease in the first place if you signed up for a five or a 10year marriage license which could then be renewed on good behavior but if it wasn't going well it would have a natural Sunset Clause you know if after 5 years no harm no foul we only signed up for a wed lease that's the idea and again you see how this like the monogamous relationship like the threple are all logical entailments of viewing marriage as just about consenting adult romance because consenting adult romance can come in as many sizes and shapes as adults can consent to and if love equals love there would be no reason for Public Policy to treat certain sizes and shapes of consenting adult love differently than other sizes and shapes to do so would be to deny marriage equality to those relationships that are thres or monogamish or wed leases now I said I wasn't going to say anything about morality or theology or tradition as far as my argument goes in this lecture but think about the public policy consequence of this and again remember the reason that the government's in the marriage business is not because it's a sucker for romance government's not in the marriage business because it cares about my love life government's in the marriage business because the sexual Union of a man and a woman can produce a child and that child deserves a mother and a father and when this doesn't happen social costs Run High so the government's trying to vindicate and to protect the rights of children and minimize harm to the community as a whole but the thropple and the wed Le and the monogamous relationship make it more likely that a man has multiple sexual partners in short-lived relationships that's what a thruple with a wed Le with a monogamous condition attached to it would entail and so it directly undercuts the public policy purpose of marriage in the first place and yet all of those further redefinitions follow logically from getting rid of the male female aspect marriage if you say that marriage has nothing to do with the Union of a man and a woman and the procreative potential and capacity of that act and of that relationship then what are you left with for saying that it should be a union permanent and exclusive of Tums it seems like you're left with a house of cards so that's the second consequence and the primary victim I should add on to that second consequence will be children and so it's interesting that in both the monogamous discussion the wle discussion and the threple discussion the authors themselves when describing these redefinitions only spoke about the consenting adults and their love and their Union they never spoke about what this would mean as a whole if Society adopted these practices for orderly child rearing that was an afterthought so the last Consequence the last consequence is the one that I actually think we're experiencing first but I mentioned it last because because I think that the other two are actually the more uh uh serious reasons for thinking about public policy on marriage but the last consequence is the one that we're experiencing first and this is the consequence for religious liberty we've already seen in the state of Massachusetts the state of Illinois and the District of Columbia that Evangelical and Catholic adoption agencies and Foster Care Providers have had to shut down because the government said they had to place children with same-sex couples on an equal footing as they did with a married mother and father now these agencies said we're not trying to get in the way of a same-sex couple adopting from a different agency they are free to adopt from the state agency they're free to adopt from a secular humanist agency we just want to be free to run our agency in a way that's in accordance with our beliefs we think that children deserve to have a mother and a father and we want to run our agency in a way that we can look for married moms and dads for the children who have been entrusted to our care these agencies said we have social science evidence that suggests that children do best with a mother and a father and we have the First Amendment which protects our right to run our agency in accordance with our religious convictions about marriage and in all three jurisdictions the government said no and in the state of Massachusetts it was particularly clear that this had nothing to do with funding it only had to do with licensing it's illegal to run an adoption agency without an adoption license and the state said we will not give you an adoption agency license unless you agree to place children with same-sex couples on an equal footing as you do married moms and dads Because if you don't you'll be violating our non-discrimination statute and discrimination is illegal in Massachusetts and you can't run an adoption agency that discriminates so these agencies were forced to shut down this does absolutely nothing to help orphans it does nothing to help children who are in foster care all this does is score a point for political correctness in an adult culture War so one of the first victims again would be innocent children we've then seen cases of photographers and florists and Bakers and inke Keepers more or less every professional that intersects with the wedding industry has now been uh hauled into court brought up on charges of discriminating against a same-sex couple and what's worth pointing out here is not a single one of these cases not a single case that has been brought to Media attention that I know of and I try to follow this stuff pretty carefully has been uh the case of a baker a photographer a floresent inkeeper saying we don't serve gays or lesbians there's not a single case of that that we know of each and every time it was only about same-sex marriage the photographer has no problem taking pictures out a birthday party for someone who's gay or lesbian the baker has no problem baking the birthday cake for a gay or a lesbian couple that's having a birthday party the florist has no problem making a bouquet of of flowers get well soon if the person who is buying the flower happens to be gay or lesbian the only objection they had was to using their artistic skills and talents to celebrate a same seex relationship as a wedding because that was a message that they didn't believe in and that they couldn't help celebrate they said we don't want to use god-given talents to celebrate a relationship that we think tells a lie about God's intentions for marriage and they simply asked to be left free to run run their business in accord with their values in all of the cases that have been cited the same sex couple found someone else to bake the cake to take the pictures to make the floral arrangements it's not as if Conservative Catholics and evangelicals have a monopoly on wedding photography and cake baking you know it's not like we're in a situation where unless you make a lane photography take these wedding photos no one will be taking wedding photos no about half the we're split on this issue half the country roughly is in favor of same-sex marriage and of those people they plenty of wedding vendors who are more than happy to make money providing their services for samesex weddings and so there's really no need to have the government coer the Evangelical photographer or the Catholic Baker or the Mormon florist and yet what we've seen is time and time again that's what's happened so the best known case is the case of elain hugan and elain um is an Evangelical photographer in 2006 she politely declined to be the wedding photographer for same-sex commitment ceremony as an Evangelical she said I can't do this because it would have me tell a lie about marriage wedding photography is a very involved process where the wedding photographers really telling the story of the couple's love telling the story of the couple's ceremony telling the story of the celebration after the ceremony she's like that's a story I can't tell and so the same couple went to a different photographer who actually charged them less money so they actually got a break here but then they sued her shortly thereafter and in 2008 the New Mexico Commission on human rights ruled against elain hugan saying she had violated the human rights of the same-sex couple and they ordered her to pay a fine of nearly $7,000 it was 69 6,900 and something doll she then appealed this to the New Mexico Supreme Court the state supreme court and she was represented by Alliance defending Freedom um who we have some representatives of that organization with us here today one of their lawyers spoke last night at the opening dinner and what they argued before the New Mexico Supreme Court was that Elaine's not trying in any way to infringe the rights of the same-sex couple they're free to get married in the Church of their choice or in the banquet hall of their choice they can have a photographer a baker or florist do it if they want to but freedom is a two-way street we live in a Live and Let Live Society Don't Force aaine to do this um and oddly enough in so the court decided against Elaine the court sided with the same-sex couple and in one of the concurring opinions one of the judges wrote that the price of citizenship is at Elaine has to take these pictures and when I got to that part of his opinion I actually had to stop and reread it a couple of times because I thought I was misreading that there was a missing comma or something because I thought he was going to say the price of citizenship is that the same sex couple should just go to a different photographer that that's how in America Live and Let Live how we harmonize pluralism and competing values would play itself out we don't coerce people into violating their consciences but no the judge says the price of citizenship is that Elaine has to leave her religious commitments at the door and take these pictures and this is part of a larger Trend that we've seen in general of people arguing that religious liberty just means freedom to worship this is what's been at the heart of the uh Hobby Lobby in the Koga wood case the HHS mandate cases and it's that you have freedom to worship what you do on Sunday morning no one's going to interfere with but once you step out into the marketplace Monday through Saturday you have to leave your faith at the door that if you're on main street or on Wall Street you can't live out your faith in your profession that's not what the free exercise of religion is about that's what freedom of worship is about the free exercise of religion as the founders intended it that the state wouldn't coerce people into violating their consciences but that'll be I think one of the first consequences that we see with the redefinition of marriage coupled with the sexual orientation and gender identity non-discrimination statutes is that they will use the law to coerce people into celebrating and treating a same-sex relationship as if it's a marriage even when it violates their consciences uh so with that it looks like we have about half an hour uh for questions and I'd be happy to provide answers if you can provide questions [Applause] Back To Top