Here’s the lecture:

About the speaker:

Ryan T. Anderson researches and writes about marriage and religious liberty as the William E. Simon Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He also focuses on justice and moral principles in economic thought, health care and education, and has expertise in bioethics and natural law theory.

Anderson, who joined the leading Washington think tank’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society in 2012, also is the editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J.

Anderson’s recent work at Heritage focuses on the constitutional questions surrounding same-sex “marriage.” He is the co-author with Princeton’s Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis of the acclaimed book “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” (Encounter Books, December 2012).

The lecture starts at 7:20 in. The lecture ends at 49:35. There are 32 minutes of Q&A.

Introduction:

• When talking about marriage in public, we should talk about philosophy, sociology and public policy
• Gay marriage proponents need to be pressed to define what marriage is, on their view
• Every definition of marriage is going to include some relationships, and exclude others
• It’s meaningless to portray one side as nice and the other mean
• Typically, marriage redefiners view marriage as a more intense emotional relationship
• Marriage redefiners should be challenged in three ways:
• 1) Does the redefined version of marriage have a public policy reason to prefer only two people?
• 2) Does the redefined version of marriage have a reason to prefer permanence?
• 3) Does the redefined version of marriage have a reason to prefer sexual exclusivity?
• Also, if marriage is just about romance, then why is the state getting involved in recognizing it?
• The talk: 1) What marriage is, 2) Why marriage matters, 3) What are the consequences of redefining marriage?

What marriage is:

• Marriage unites spouses – hearts, minds and bodies
• Marriage unites spouses to perform a good: creating a human being and raising that human being
• Marriage is a commitment: permanent and exclusive
• Male and female natures are distinct and complementary

The public purpose of marriage:

• to attach men and women to each other
• to attach mothers and fathers to their children
• there is no such thing as parenting, there is only mothering and fathering
• the evidence shows that children benefit from mothering and fathering
• boys who grow up without fathers are more likely to commit crimes
• girls who grow up without fathers are more likely to have sex earlier
• Children benefit from having a mother and a father
• can’t say that fathers are essential for children if we support gay marriage, which makes fathers optional
• without marriage: child poverty increases, crime increases, social mobility decreases, welfare spending increases
• when government encourages marriage, then government has less do to – stays smaller, spends less
• if we promote marriage as an idea, we are not excluding gay relationships or even partner benefits
• finally, gay marriage has shown itself to be hostile to religious liberty

Consequences redefining marriage:

• it undermines the norm in public like that kids deserve a mom and a dad – moms and dads are interchangeable
• it changes the institution of marriage away from the needs of children, and towards the needs of adults
• it undermines the norm of permanence
• we learned what happens when marriage is redefined before: with no-fault divorce
• no-fault divorce: after this became law, divorce rates doubled – the law changed society
• gay marriage would teach society that mothers and fathers are optional when raising children
• if marriage is what people with intense feelings do, then how can you rationally limit marriage to only two people?
• if marriage is what people with intense feelings do, then if other people cause intense feelings, there’s no fidelity
• if marriage is what people with intense feelings do, then if the feelings go away, there is no permanence
• the public policy consequences to undermining the norms of exclusivity and permanence = fatherless children and fragmented families
• a final consequences is the decline and elimination of religious liberty – e.g. – adoption agencies closing, businesses being sued

We’re doing very well on abortion, but we need to get better at knowing how to discuss marriage. If you’re looking for something short to read, click here. If you want to read a long paper that his book is based on.

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