If we are to restore and secure the institution of marriage, we must recover a sound understanding of what marriage is and why it is in the public interest for law and policy to take cognizance of it and support it. Marriage is a prepolitical form of association—what might be called a natural institution. It is not created by law, though law recognizes and regulates it in every culture. Nowhere is it treated as a purely private matter. Some on the libertarian fringe toy with the idea that marriage could be privatized, and even some who are not on the fringe wonder whether that might be the best solution to the controversy over same-sex marriage.
I understand why someone would consider this idea, but it strikes me as a bad one. There is a reason that all cultures treat marriage as a matter of public concern and even recognize it in law and regulate it. The family is the fundamental unit of society. Governments rely on families to produce something that governments need—but, on their own, they could not possibly produce: upright, decent people who make honest, law-abiding, public-spirited citizens. And marriage is the indispensable foundation of the family. Although all marriages in all cultures have their imperfections, children flourish in an environment where they benefit from the love and care of both mother and father, and from the committed and exclusive love of their parents for each other.
Anyone who believes in limited government should strongly back government support for the family. Does this sound paradoxical? In the absence of a strong marriage culture, families fail to form, and when they do form they are often unstable. Absentee fathers become a serious problem, out-of-wedlock births are common, and a train of social pathologies follows. With families failing to perform their health, education, and welfare functions, the demand for government grows, whether in the form of greater policing or as a provider of other social services. Bureaucracies must be created, and they inexorably expand—indeed they become powerful lobbyists for their own preservation and expansion. Everyone suffers, with the poorest and most vulnerable suffering most.
The effective defense of marriage against the current onslaught will require an understanding of marriage as a matter of moral truth. Practical or pragmatic arguments are legitimate and important. But too few pro-marriage politicians are willing to say much about what marriage actually is. This gives those who would abolish the conjugal conception of marriage an important advantage in public debate. They hammer away with their rhetoric of “love makes a family” and demand to know how anyone’s marriage would be threatened if the same-sex partners next door were also allowed to marry.
(Robert P. George, "Law and Moral Purpose," First Things [January 2008])
