Resource Bank For Defense Of Marriage

BACK IN THE 1970s gay advocates scorned “bourgeois” marriage. Now in the 2000s they are advocating “gay marriage” on civil rights grounds. And the occasional liberal court has agreed with them.

The gay marriage advocates have insisted, writes Ryan T. Anderson, that nothing about gay marriage implies polygamy or bestiality. Indeed conservatives who have argued that if gay marriage is justified on equal protection grounds then any sexual relationship can be so justified have been stigmatized as

slippery-slope reasoners, scaremongers, and bigots. After all, it was said, no one seriously argues in favor of state-sanctioned polygamy or polyamory.

But now polygamy and polyamory advocates have published an ad in The New York Times titled “Beyond Gay Marriage.” It has

more than 300 signatories include feminist icon Gloria Steinem, NYU sociologist Judith Stacey, Columbia University anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli, Georgetown law professors Robin West and Chai Feldblum... [and Nickeled and Dimed] writer Barbara Ehrenreich.

So you know that things are getting serious on the defense of marriage front.

Just in time there is a resource bank available to defend traditional neterosexual marriage and it’s on the web at www.princetonprinciples.org.

It’s entitled Marriage and the Public Good: Ten Principles and it headlines recent research on the benefit of marriage for men, women, and children. Best of all, it has a bibliography where you can get to the primary sources on marriage research.

Here are the ten principles:

Marriage is a personal union, intended for the whole of life, of husband and wife.
Marriage is a profound human good, elevating and perfecting our social and sexual nature.
Ordinarily, both men and women who marry are better off as a result.
Marriage protects and promotes the wellbeing of children.
Marriage sustains civil society and promotes the common good.
Marriage is a wealth-creating institution, increasing human and social capital.
When marriage weakens, the equality gap widens, as children suffer from the disadvantages of growing up in homes without committed mothers and fathers.
A functioning marriage culture serves to protect political liberty and foster limited government.
The laws that govern marriage matter significantly.
"Civil marriage" and "religious marriage" cannot be rigidly or completely divorced from one another.

Makes you think, doesn’t it.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems... No more rules, no more models... Genius conjures up rather than learns... ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings, and that a refusal to use the means appointed was a damning sin.”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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