The Meaning of Marriage Quotes

“The problem was revealed most clearly by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in the recent Goodridge case, the case in which the Court in effect overturned the traditional laws of marriage and installed same-sex marriage. Quite central to the argument of the majority of four judges in that case was the insistence that procreation is not a requirement of marriage, and that the laws on marriage “do not privilege procreative heterosexual intercourse between married people above every other form of adult intimacy.” But the Court opened itself here to more than it realized, for by the same reasoning one may say that marriage should be open to uncles and nieces, father and daughters, who happen to be sterile and intimate. Or to the man willing to have a vasectomy in order to marry his mother? And yet, more than that: if people of the same sex may marry, why would the arrangement not be open to a father and son? We have seen cases of incest, as bizarre as they may seem, just as we’ve seen things as odd as the fellow in Maine who sought a license to marry his dog, or the fellow in Denver a few years ago who sought to marry his horse. The impulse is there, and once again it matters not at all in principle that these are rare cases. Until recently it has been rare to see people of the same sex wishing to marry. The fact that there may only be a handful of cases does not relieve us of the need to explain the grounds of principle on which we would deny these claims of marriage—once we move out of that framework of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“MARRIAGE IS A UNIVERSAL HUMAN INSTITUTION. Virtually every known human society has some form of marriage. 1 While the norms of marriage in different cultures vary considerably, marriage always has something to do with creating a public (not private) sexual union between a man and woman so that socially valued children have both a mother and a father, and so that society has the next generation it needs.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“Marriage does not serve primarily to accommodate or to mitigate social tragedy of this sort. Its principal function is to prevent or limit the occurrence of such tragedies in the first place.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“For same-sex marriage to be regarded as a serious option by serious people, marriage must be failing. Indeed, all justifications for same-sex marriage for the sake of children arise out of social tragedy accepted as the status quo. Same-sex marriage for the sake of children requires the existence of men and women who are not forming stable unions conducive to the rearing of their biological children. It requires biological parents who are not willing or able to raise their children. It accommodates husbands or wives who would like to divorce to join lovers of the same sex. It envisions men and women offering their sexual organs, or sperm and eggs, to others without intending to accept the responsibilities of being parents to the children they bring into the world. In short, same-sex marriage for the sake of children can only exist in a world in which a sufficiently critical mass of parents are willing to walk away from their biological children and the mother (or father) by whom they sired (or conceived) these children.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“To this, it is countered that the same-sex conception of marriage and family is, and must be, parasitic upon the demise of conjugal society, wherein biological parents are not taking responsibility for the rearing and education of their own children. Having no natural justification, the dominion of two adults of the same sex over children in their custody is crucially dependent upon the state to enforce their claim to these children as against the claims of the biological parent(s). Same-sex marriage is necessarily a political form of social order, invoking the power of the state to make it so.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“Moreover, the attempt by advocates of same-sex marriage to sever marriage from procreation is more chimerical than real.35 One would be hard-pressed to find an advocate of same-sex marriage who would accept the proposition that same-sex couples should be given the right to marry but that right does not entail a right to procreate and rear children. Were marriage and family truly severable, as the contractual view suggests, the one would not entail the other. However, advocates of same-sex marriage want it both ways. They want the contractual view of marriage plus the option of raising children.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“The analogy between infertile heterosexuals and same-sex couples misses the point. The extension of marriage to infertile heterosexual couples serves not to deprecate same-sex couples, but to preserve the equal status of women in marriage. A test for fertility would be unfair to women because all women spend most of their adult lives in a state of infertility. Fertile women are infertile most days of a month, and postmenopausal women are always infertile. A fertility requirement would also render women susceptible to enormous abuse by men, providing a ready excuse for men who would trade in older women for nubile brides. The status of women in marriage would be intolerably diminished through this practice. Infertility is less common among men, as they can sire children into old age. Moreover, men, like women, typically do not discover that they are infertile until they attempt to sire children, at which time they ought already to be married. A measure that serves primarily to protect women and to preserve their equal status within the institution of marriage is not a measure that is an appropriate basis by which to judge that the same should go for same-sex couples. One of the great challenges men and women face in marriage is in coming to terms with their differences while respecting the status of the other as an equal. Acceptance of infertility is a measure promoting this end. A measure to accommodate the reality of sex-based difference in marriage is no reason to extend marriage to same-sex couples. Moreover, accommodation for infertility in no way diminishes the reality that the inequality of the parent-child relationship is what differentiates marriage from other contractual relationships. It is the parent-child relation, as it emerges from sexual difference and procreation, which elevates marriage above a mere contract, and renders it a sacred duty.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“Like the market, conjugal society, consisting of marriage and family, is not the creation of the state. It is a pre-political institution, rooted in sex difference and procreation. Given the pre-political nature of conjugal society, the state regulates it rightly by recognizing it as a natural fact with its own norms and purposes. The state ought not treat conjugal society as its own creation. Where there is evidence that parents are failing in their duties to each other or to their children, the state may intervene. Absent this, however, the state ought to leave conjugal society, rooted in the union of one man and one woman, alone.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“Seen from this perspective, the sexual revolution is to the family what Communism is to the market. Both entail statist assaults on core institutions of civil society, leading to human misery that the state is not equipped to put right. In both cases, what results from the erosion of a core institution is a citizenry ill-equipped to be self-governing; accordingly, state power inevitably grows.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“The dualistic presuppositions of the revisionist position are fully on display in the frequent references by Macedo and others to sexual organs as “equipment.” 60 Neither sperm nor eggs, neither penises nor vaginas, are properly discussed in ethical discourse in such terms. Nor are reproductive and other bodily organs “used” by persons considered as somehow standing over and apart from these and other aspects of their personal reality. In fact, where a person treats his body as mere equipment, a mere means to extrinsic ends, the existential sundering of the bodily and conscious dimensions of the self that he effects by his choices and actions brings with it a certain self-alienation, a damaging of the good of personal self-integration.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“It is a plain matter of biological fact that, as Grisez says, reproduction is a single function, yet it is carried out not by an individual male or female human being, but by a male and female as a mated pair. 50 So, in respect of reproduction, albeit not in respect of other activities (such as locomotion or digestion), the mated pair is a single organism; the partners form a single reproductive principle: they become “one flesh.” In response to Posner, Grisez proposes a thought experiment. Imagine a type of bodily, rational being that reproduces, not by mating, but by some individual performance. Imagine that for these beings, however, locomotion or digestion is performed not by individuals, but only by biologically complementary pairs that unite for this purpose. Would anybody have difficulty understanding that in respect of reproduction the organism performing the function is the individual, while in respect of locomotion or digestion the organism performing the function is the united pair? Would anybody deny that the unity effectuated for purposes of locomotion or digestion is an organic unity?”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“Stephen Macedo has accused the traditional view and its defenders of precisely this “double standard.” He asks: “What is the point of sex in an infertile marriage? Not procreation: the partners (let us assume) know that they are infertile. If they have sex, it is for pleasure and to express their love, or friendship, or some other good. It will be for precisely the same reason that committed, loving gay couples have sex.” 47 People today who are inclined to a liberal view of sexual morality tend to find this sort of criticism impressive, and more than a few conservatives seem to find themselves stumped by it. Once the core of the traditional view is brought into focus, however, it is clear that the criticism straightforwardly fails because it presupposes as true precisely what the traditional view denies, namely, that the value (and, thus, the point) of sex in marriage can only be instrumental. It is a central tenet of the traditional view that the value (and justifying point) of sex is the good of marriage itself, consummated and actualized in and by sexual acts that unite spouses as one flesh and, thus, interpersonally.”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“There is no allusion to marriage or family in the Constitution. It is barely mentioned in the Federalist Papers or elsewhere in the ratification debates. The reason why the founders “ignored” the family was that it was not an issue for them. It was not a social problem. On the contrary, the family was the accepted substratum of society. It”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals

“Nonetheless, by the time we arrive at the eighteenth century and the time of the founders, marriage and the family came to look very much as Aristotle had pictured it. In the previous centuries, Lutheran reforms had lodged marriage into the civil structure of society and made it more a concern of civil law,11 but, joined by Calvin, Protestantism retained parental control over the right of children to marry. John Locke, however, saw marriage as contracted political society, and thus his image of the family as a commonwealth made up of combined individuals parallel his image of the formation of the larger political commonwealth as well.12 Furthermore, Locke declares that parents are, “by the law of nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish and educate” their children.13 Since government is instituted to enforce the laws of nature, Locke states that government should make laws that enforce “the security of the marriage bed.’’14 What”
― Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, & Morals