The public meaning of marriage

To discuss marriage adequately, we must ask what business the state has with it anyway. Why does it not regulate friendships or intentionally temporary unions? If marriage is based on personal affections — which are often temporary, inconstant and divided — on what principle do we ground the recognized marital norms of permanence, exclusivity and monogamy? If marriage is a naturally occurring, pre-political institution — as universal human experience indicates — what can the state contribute to it?

The state's concern is the common good. Marriage comes under the state's purview by providing the optimal environment for rearing children: the state's next generation of citizens. Society needs babies, who best thrive with a mother and father, who in turn flourish as parents and partners in a normatively permanent and public commitment: marriage.

Central to marriage as distinct from other relationships, erotic or otherwise, is the objective union made possible in sexual intercourse, which by organically uniting a man and woman provides the physical foundation for the comprehensive union that marriage is on biological, emotional, spiritual and psychological levels. Besides providing the natural means for bearing children, marital union creates the best milieu in which to rear them happily and healthily.

Millennial human experience and social science evidence on every indicator of child wellbeing demonstrate the unique benefit to children of a wedded mother and father. The nonpartisan research group Child Trends, for example, summarized relevant scholarly findings: "Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage." Researchers at the Brookings Institution, the Wilson School, the Center for Law and Social Policy and the Institute for American Values have reached similar conclusions.

This is no indictment of the personal character of homosexuals or their capacity for affection. In recognizing marriage as an inherently male-female union, the state discriminates against no one. It administers no orientation test for marriage and doesn't require us to wed the object of our erotic affection — only to pledge fidelity to a spouse and children. If two heterosexual men wished to marry for economic benefits, they'd likewise be denied. In these ways, this debate is remarkably not about homosexuality, but about preserving marriage's link to children's need for a wedded mother and father.

While accidents or tragedies can deprive children of the optimal arrangement and other conditions in particular cases have worked, it seems unreasonable to systematically promote what social science shows are non-ideal environments. Nor is this necessary: thousands of able married couples long to adopt.

Thus, it is the state's prerogative and obligation to promote and privilege the pre-political institution with an indispensable, unique link to the common good. Marriage's relevance to the state, its opposite-sex structure and its norms of permanence, exclusivity and monogamy are all grounded in its contribution to public welfare: children. In fact, by endorsing the statement "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage," more than 300 scholars and public figures — including our own Professor Cornel West GS' 80 — recognized and embraced one logical consequence of not requiring sexual complementarity: namely, "legal recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships," including ones with "more than one conjugal partner." Accepting the idea of "same-sex marriage" eliminates the logical basis for limiting marriage to two people.

Defining marriage by reference to spouses' sexual complementarity is therefore reasonable and required by justice because only thus does marriage retain, in the cultural consciousness and in practice, its unique, irreplaceable contribution to real people's (especially children's) well being — a contribution whose public character justifies state intervention in the first place.

We can meet legitimate needs for privileges like hospital visitation, on the other hand, by non-marital partnerships. But these should be open to anyone. Limiting them to homosexual couples would unjustly discriminate. Sexual activity (as opposed to friendship or blood relation) is not uniquely relevant to these private benefits as opposite-sex marriage and the children it best rears are to public welfare. But because traditional marriage is best for forming future generations, it would be unjust — to children especially and society generally — to obscure its nature or necessity.

The Anscombe Society categorically denounces discrimination against homosexual persons — in housing, healthcare or elsewhere — as unjust. Sexual orientation affects basic human dignity not one iota. However, we also oppose the New Jersey Supreme Court's recent decision in Lewis v. Harris to require extending marital benefits to same-sex couples. Not all distinctions are unjust, and some — like the privileged status of traditional marriage — are required by justice. Sherif Girgis '08 is a philosophy major from Dover, Del., and president of the Anscombe Society. He may be reached at sgirgis@princeton.edu.