Defending Marriage

Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity is a rousing, compelling defense of traditional, natural marriage. Here, Anthony Esolen—professor at Providence College and a prolific writer uses moral, theological, and cultural arguments to defend this holy and ancient institution, bedrock of society—and to illuminate the threats it faces from modern revolutions in law, public policy, and sexual morality. Inside, discover: - Traditional marriage’s roots in age-old religious, cultural, and natural laws - Why gay marriage is a metaphysical impossibility - How acceptance and legal sanction of gay marriage threatens the family - How the state becomes a religion when it attempts to elevate gay marriage, and enshrine as a civil right all consensual sex - How divorce and sexual license have brought marriage to the brink - How today’s culture has impoverished and emptied love of its true meaning In Defending Marriage Esolen expertly and succinctly identifies the cultural dangers of gay marriage and the Sexual Revolution which paved its way. He offers a stirring defense of true marriage, the family, culture, and love—and provides the compelling arguments that will return us to sanity, and out of our current morass.

This book outlines the constitutional argument in favor of plural marriage in the United States.

An affirmation of the institution of marriage from the male point of view discusses the benefits of commitment to one person, the hollowness of the sexual revolution, and the importance of working at a good marriage

Against Marriage argues that marriage violates both equality and liberty and should not be recognized by the state. Clare Chambers shows how feminist and liberal principles require creation of a marriage-free state: one in which private marriages, whether religious or secular, would have nolegal status.Part One makes the case against marriage. Chambers investigates the critique of marriage that has developed within feminist and liberal theory. Feminists have long argued that state-recognised marriage is a violation of equality. Chambers endorses the feminist view and argues, in contrast to recentegalitarian pro-marriage movements, that same-sex marriage is not enough to make marriage equal. The egalitarian case against marriage is the most fundamental argument of Against Marriage. But Chambers also argues that state-recognised marriage violates liberty, including the political liberalversion of liberty that is based on neutrality between conceptions of the good.Part Two sets out the case for the marriage-free state. Chambers criticizes recent arguments that traditional marriage should be replaced with either a reformed version of marriage, such as civil partnership, or a purely contractual model of relationship regulation. She then sets out a new model forthe legal regulation of personal relationships. Instead of regulating by status, the state should regulate relationships according to the practices they involve. Instead of regulating relationships holistically, assuming that relationship practices are bundled together in one significantrelationship, the marriage-free state regulates practices on a piecemeal basis. The marriage-free state thus employs piecemeal, practice-based regulation. It may regulate private marriages, including religious marriages, so as to protect equality. But it takes no interest in defining or protectingthe meaning of marriage.

Today we find ourselves at a crossroads of two powerful, unrelenting currents that are completely at odds with one another. The movement for legal recognition of same-sex unions has gone beyond the separate but equal status of civil unions to demand equality in marriage for all couples. Progress is being made on many fronts: mayoral action, clergy officiating at same-sex marriage and union ceremonies, state legislative responses, and street protests, to name a few. Meanwhile, opposition to same-sex marriage has also been gathering strength. The struggle is sure to continue unabated for some time to come, pitting those who believe in the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman—and who seek to codify this belief in the U.S. Constitution—against those who find the basis for marriage between two loving, committed individuals not only in the history of our civil rights legislation and court decisions, but also in scripture and sacred religious traditions. Those who believe in extending to same-sex couples the 1,049 rights conferred by marriage as well as the supportive embrace of religious communities seek to strengthen the institution of marriage by making it inclusive and by passing laws and broadening doctrines to uphold marriage rights for all couples. This three-volume set clarifies the legal, political, religious, cultural, and social ramifications of same-sex marriage for gay and lesbian couples and their families and friends, and for the general public interested in the future of civil rights in the United States.

Until very recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partnership: a male–female union. What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage as something other than the conjugal union of husband and wife is a mistake. Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, this book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences. Since then, it has been cited and debated by scholars and activists throughout the world as the most formidable defense of the tradition ever written. Now revamped, expanded, and vastly enhanced, What Is Marriage? stands poised to meet its moment as few books of this generation have. Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George offer a devastating critique of the idea that equality requires redefining marriage. They show why both sides must first answer the question of what marriage really is. They defend the principle that marriage, as a comprehensive union of mind and body ordered to family life, unites a man and a woman as husband and wife, and they document the social value of applying this principle in law. Most compellingly, they show that those who embrace same-sex civil marriage leave no firm ground—none—for not recognizing every relationship describable in polite English, including polyamorous sexual unions, and that enshrining their view would further erode the norms of marriage, and hence the common good. Finally, What Is Marriage? decisively answers common objections: that the historic view is rooted in bigotry, like laws forbidding interracial marriage; that it is callous to people’s needs; that it can’t show the harm of recognizing same-sex couplings or the point of recognizing infertile ones; and that it treats a mere “social construct” as if it were natural or an unreasoned religious view as if it were rational.

The contemporary world has become so unravelled that the Congress of the United States, with nothing better to do, has felt the necessity of passing a Defense of Marriage Act. We are all being treated to daily media coverage of the same-sex marriages and programming which would make the devil blush. We are being told that the weird is just fine. Will the children of the man-women unions see this deviation as normal? Some critics blame society's depravation on the legions of spent politicians wreaking havoc on the country and perhaps they are not wrong. But maybe, just maybe, society in the main has had enough and is at last fighting back against the forces tying to intimidate it. This book looks at laws and actions being taken at the federal level to right a ship gone very wrong.