Attorneys For Defendants Gary R. Herbert and John E. Swallow

PHILIP S.
LOTT (5750)
STANFORD E. PURSER (13440)
Assistant Utah Attorneys General
J OHN E. SWALLOW (5802)
Utah Attorney General
160 East 300 South, Sixth Floor
P.O. Box 140856
Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-0856
Telephone: (801) 366-0100
Facsimile: (801) 366-0101
Email: phillott@utah.gov
Email: spurser@utah.gov
Attorneys for Defendants Gary R. Herbert and John E. Swallow

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF UTAH, CENTRAL DIVISION

DEREK KITCHEN, individually; MOUDI
SBEITY, individually; KAREN ARCHER,
individually; KATE CALL, individually;
LAURIE WOOD, individually; and
KODY PARTRIDGE, individually,

Plaintiffs,

vs.

GARY R. HERBERT, in his official capacity
as Governor of Utah; J OHN SWALLOW, in
his official capacity as Attorney General of
Utah; and SHERRIE SWENSEN, in her
official capacity as Clerk of Salt Lake
County,

Defendants.

APPENDIX IN SUPPORT OF STATE
DEFENDANTS MOTION FOR
SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Civil Case No. 2:13-cv-00217-RJ S

J udge Robert J . Shelby

TAB 68a
(1227 - 1272)
Case 2:13-cv-00217-RJS Document 50 Filed 10/11/13 Page 1 of 54
ii

APPENDIX
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Tab # Description Page

PART ONE
LEGAL MATERIALS

1. Utah Code 30-1-2

1
2. Utah Code 30-1-4.1

2
3. Utah Constitution Art. 1, 29 (Amendment 3)

3
4. H.J .R. 25, J oint Resolution on Marriage (as originally filed)

4
5. H.J .R. 25, J oint Resolution on Marriage (Senate Floor Amendments)

6
6. H.J .R. 25, J oint Resolution on Marriage (final, reflecting Senate amendments)

7
7. Chart: The definition of marriage: State statutory and constitutional
provisions
9
8. Chart: The definition of marriage: State ballot measures

13
9. Chart: The language of State constitutional bans on domestic partnership and
other non-marital unions
18
10. Chart: Court decisions on the marriage issue

23
11. Chart: Pending cases on the marriage issue

25
12. J urisdictional Statement, Baker v. Nelson, No. 71-1027 (U.S. Supreme Court
Feb. 11, 1971)
27
13. Amicus curiae brief of Social Science Professors, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No.
12-144, and United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307 (U.S. Sup. Ct. J anuary
2013)
40
14. Amicus curiae brief of Scholars of History and Related Disciplines,
Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144 (U.S. Sup. Ct. J anuary 2013)
81
15. [Reserved]

16. [Reserved]

iii

PART TWO
MATERIALS ON ADJUDICATIVE FACTS

17. Affidavit of William C. Duncan and Exhibit 1 (curriculum vitae)

127
18. Excerpts from Utah Voter Information Pamphlet, General Election,
November 2, 2004
150
19. Vote count on Amendment 3, by county, with totals, and with percentages

155
20. Campaign materials for Amendment 3

156
21. Campaign materials against Amendment 3

171
22. New accounts, press releases, and editorials regarding Amendment 3

183
23. Fund-raising and expenditures in the Amendment 3 campaign

222
24. Affidavit of Dr. J oseph P. Price and Exhibit 1 (curriculum vitae)

223
25. [Reserved]

26. [Reserved]

PART THREE
MATERIALS ON LEGISLATIVE FACTS

27. INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES, WHY MARRIAGE MATTERS: THIRTY
CONCLUSIONS FROM THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (3d ed. 2011).
232
28. THE WITHERSPOON INSTITUTE, MARRIAGE AND THE PUBLIC GOOD: TEN
PRINCIPLES (2008).
280
29. INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES, MARRIAGE AND THE LAW: A STATEMENT
OF PRINCIPLES (2006).
318
30. INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES (DAN CERE, PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR),
THE FUTURE OF FAMILY LAW: LAW AND THE MARRIAGE CRISIS IN NORTH
AMERICA (2005).
362
31. INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES ET AL. (ELIZABETH MARQUARDT,
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR), THE REVOLUTION IN PARENTHOOD: THE EMERGING
GLOBAL CLASH BETWEEN ADULT RIGHTS AND CHILDRENS NEEDS (2006).
413
32. COMMISSION ON PARENTHOODS FUTURE & INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN
VALUES (ELIZABETH MARQUARDT, PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR), ONE PARENT
OR FIVE: A GLOBAL LOOK AT TODAYS NEW INTENTIONAL FAMILIES (2011).
457
33. INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES (ELIZABETH MARQUARDT, NOVAL D.
GLENN, & KAREN CLARK, CO-INVESTIGATORS), MY DADDYS NAME IS
DONOR: A NEW STUDY OF YOUNG ADULTS CONCEIVED THROUGH SPERM
DONATION (2010).
529
iv

34. Margaret Somerville, What About the Children, in DIVORCING MARRIAGE:
UNVEILING THE DANGERS OF CANADAS NEW SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 63-78
(Daniel Cere & Douglas Farrows eds., 2004).
669
35. Margaret Somerville, Childrens human rights and unlinking child-parent
biological bonds with adoption, same-sex marriage and new reproductive
technologies, 13 J . FAM. STUD. 179-201 (2007).
687
36. Margaret Somerville, Childrens Human Rights to Natural Biological Origins
and Family Structure, 1 INTL J . J URISPRUDENCE FAM. 35 (2010).
710
37. Don Browning & Elizabeth Marquardt, What About the Children? Liberal
Cautions on Same-Sex Marriage, in THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE: FAMILY,
STATE, MARKET, AND MORALS 173-192 (Robert P. George & J ean Bethke
Elshtain, eds., 2006).
732
38. Maggie Gallagher, (How) Does Marriage Protect Child Well-Being?, in THE
MEANING OF MARRIAGE: FAMILY, STATE, MARKET, AND MORALS 197-212
(Robert P. George & J ean Bethke Elshtain, eds., 2006).
752
39. Seana Sugrue, Soft Despotism and Same-Sex Marriage, in THE MEANING OF
MARRIAGE: FAMILY, STATE, MARKET, AND MORALS 172-96 (Robert P.
George & J ean Bethke Elshtain, eds., 2006).
770
40. THE SOCIOLOGY OF GEORGE SIMMEL 128-32 (Kurt H. Wolff, trans. & ed.,
1950).
797
41. CLAUDE LVI-STRAUSS, THE VIEW FROM AFAR 39-42 (J oachim Neugroschel
& Phoebe Hoss trans. 1985)
804
42. G. ROBINA QUALE, A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE SYSTEMS 1-3 (1988).

810
43. EDWARD O. LAUMANN ET AL., THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF SEXUALITY:
SEXUAL PRACTICES IN THE UNITED STATES 310-13 (1994).
815
44. CONTEMPORARY MARRIAGE: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON A CHANGING
INSTITUTION 7-8 (Kingsley Davis, ed., 1985).
819
45. J AMES Q. WILSON, THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM 40-41, 168-170 (2002).

823
46. BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI, SEX, CULTURE, AND MYTH 10-11 (1962).

831
47. DADDY DEAREST? ACTIVE FATHERHOOD AND PUBLIC POLICY 57 (Kate
Stanley ed., 2005).
834
48. DAVID POPENOE, LIFE WITHOUT FATHER: COMPELLING NEW EVIDENCE THAT
FATHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE ARE INDISPENSABLE FOR THE GOOD OF
CHILDREN AND SOCIETY 139-63 (1996).
837
49. William J . Doherty et al., Responsible Fathering: An Overview and
Conceptual Framework, 60 J . MARRIAGE & FAM. 277-292 (1998).
852
50. KRISTIN ANDERSON MOORE ET AL., MARRIAGE FROM A CHILDS PERSPECIVE:
HOW DOES FAMILY STRUCTURE AFFECT CHILDREN, AND WHAT CAN WE DO
ABOUT IT?, a Child Trends Research Brief (2002).
868
51. Lawrence B. Finer & Mia R. Zolna, Unintended Pregnancy in the United
States: incidence and disparities, 2006, 84 CONTRACEPTION 478-85 (2011).
876

v

52. ELIZABETH WILDSMITH ET AL., CHILDBEARING OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE:
ESTIMATES AND TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES, a Child Trends Research
Brief (2011).
884
53. SAMUEL W. STURGEON, THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAMILY STRUCTURE
AND ADOLESCENT SEXUAL ACTIVITY, a familyfacts.org Special Report
(November 2008).
890
54. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Servs., Administration for Children &
Families, Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation, Distribution of Abuse
and Neglect by Family Characteristics, in FOURTH NATIONAL INCIDENCE
STUDY OF CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT (NIS-4)
892
55. Paul R. Amato, The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive,
Social, and Emotional Well-Being of the Next Generation, 15 THE FUTURE OF
CHILDREN 75-96 (2005).
936
56. Douglas W. Allen, High school graduation rates among children of same-sex
households, 11 Rev. of Econ. Of the Household (published on-line September
26, 2013).
959
57. Mark Regnerus, How different are the adult children of parents who have
same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study, 41
SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH 752-70 (2012).
983
58. Mark Regnerus, Parental same-sex relationships, family instability, and
subsequent life outcomes for adult children: Answering critics of the new
family structures study with additional analyses, 41 SOCIAL SCIENCE
RESEARCH 1367-77 (2012).
1002
59. Loren Marks, Same-sex parenting and childrens outcomes: A closer
examination of the American psychological associations brief on lesbian and
gay parenting, 41 SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH 735-51 (2012).
1013
60. WILLIAM C. DUNCAN, MISPLACED RELIANCE ON SOCIAL SCIENCE EVIDENCE
IN THE PROPOSITION 8 CASE, Vol. 5, No. 6, an Institute for Marriage and
Public Policy Research Brief (2012).
1030
61. J OHN R. SEARLE, THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL REALITY 4-5, 27-29, 31-37,
55-57, 59-60, 76-104, 117-120, 227-28 (1995).
1035
62. J OHN R. SEARLE, MAKING THE SOCIAL WORLD: THE STRUCTURE OF HUMAN
CIVILIZATION 6-16, 84-93, 102-08, 143-44 (2010).
1089
63. Douglas Farrow, Why Fight Same-Sex Marriage?, TOUCHSTONE, J an.Feb.
2012
1121
64. Ross Douthat, Gay Parents and the Marriage Debate, THE NEW YORK TIMES,
J une 11, 2002.
1128
65. INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES (BENJ AMIN SCAFIDI, PRINCIPAL
INVESTIGATOR), THE TAXPAYER COSTS OF DIVORCE AND UNWED
CHILDBEARING: FIRST-EVER ESTIMATES FOR THE NATION AND ALL FIFTY
STATES (2008).
1131
66. BEYOND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: A NEW STRATEGIC VISION FOR ALL OUR
FAMILIES & RELATIONSHIPS (J uly 26, 2006).
1175
67. SHERIF GIRGIS, RYAN T. ANDERSON, AND ROBERT P. GEORGE, WHAT IS
MARRIAGE? MAN AND WOMAN: A DEFENSE 1-2, 6-12, 23-36 (2012).
1202
vi

68. DAVID BLANKENHORN, THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE 3-4, 11-21, 55, 91-106,
120-25, 171-75, 179-201 (2007).
1227
69. [Reserved]

70. [Reserved]

PART FOUR
CANADIAN AND BRITISH LAW JOURNAL ARTICLES

71. Matthew B. OBrien, Why Liberal Neutrality Prohibits Same-Sex Marriage:
Rawls, Political Liberalism, and the Family, 1 BRIT. J . AM. L. STUDIES (Issue
2, Summer/Fall 2012, May 1, 2012).
1291
72. F.C. DeCoste, Courting Leviathan: Limited Government and Social Freedom
in Reference Re Same-Sex Marriage, 42 ALTA. L. REV. 1099 (2005).
1352
73. F.C. Decoste, The Halpern Transformation: Same-Sex Marriage, Civil
Society, and the Limits of Liberal Law, 41 ALTA. L. REV. 619 (2003).
1377
74. Monte Neil Stewart, Judicial Redefinition of Marriage, 21 CAN. J . FAM. L. 11
(2004).
1403

Dated this 11
th
day of October, 2013.

J OHN E. SWALLOW
Utah Attorney General

/s/ Philip S. Lott
Philip S. Lott
Stanford E. Purser
Assistant Utah Attorneys General
Attorneys for Defendants Gary R. Herbert
and John Swallow

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that on the 11
th
day of October, 2013, I electronically filed the foregoing
with the Clerk of Court using the CM/ECF system which sent notification of such filing to the
following:
Peggy A. Tomsic tomsic@mgplaw.com
J ames E. Magleby magleby@mgplaw.com
J ennifer Fraser Parrish parrish@mgplaw.com
MAGLEBY & GREENWOOD, P.C.
170 South Main Street, Suite 850
Salt Lake City, UT 84101-3605

vii

Ralph Chamness rchamness@slco.org
Darcy M. Goddard dgoddard@slco.org
Salt Lake County District Attorneys
2001 South State, S3500
Salt Lake City, Utah 84190-1210

/s/ Philip S. Lott


TAB 68

Copyright 2007 by David Blankenhorn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of Encounter Books, 900 Broadway
Suite 400, New York, New York, 10003.
First edition published in 2007 by Encounter Books, an activity of
Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax exempt
corporation.
Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com
Manufactured in the United States and printed on acid-free paper.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992 (R 1997)(Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blankenhorn, David.
The future of marriage I by David Blankenhorn.
p. em.
ISBN 1-59403-QSl-2 (alk. paper)
1. Marriage. 2. Marriage-History. 3. Same-sex marriage.
I. Title.
HQ503. B53 2007
306.84 '8-dc22
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
2006025736
001228
INTRODUCTION 3
come to believe one thing with more certainty than anything else:
What children need most are mothers and fathers. Not caregivers. Not
parent-like adults. Not even "parents." What a child wants and needs
more than anything else are the mother and the father who together
made the child, who love the child, and who love each other. As G. K.
Chesterton once said in a similar context, "That I know is a good
thing .... If other things are against it, other things must go down."
1
In recent decades, of course, the marital conduct of hetero-
sexuals in the United States has done much to erode both the ideal
and the reality of the mother-father childrearing union. Many advo-
cates of same-sex marriage are only too happy to highlight this fact,
and in one respect their point is a fair one. Why draw the line at
same-sex marriage when we as a society seem to be unwilling to
draw the line anywhere else? At the same time, for anyone who
wishes the institution well, the concern remains. Redefining mar-
riage to include gay and lesbian couples would eliminate entirely
jn law, and weaken still further in culh.Jre, the basic idea of a mother
and a father for every child. Once this proposed reform became
law, even to say the words out loud in public-"Every child needs
a father and a mother"-would probably be viewed as explicitly
divisive and discriminatory, possibly even as hate speech. For card-
carrying child advocates and marriage nuts like me and my col-
leagues, this possibility is disturbing.
Many thinkers, perhaps most notably Isaiah Berlin, the great
twentieth-century philosopher of liberalism, have pointed out that
many important choices we face do not involve choosing between
good and bad, but between good and good. It is good to deter crime
by punishing criminals; it is also good to forgive. But doing more
punishing means doing less forgiving, because the two goods are,
to some extent, mutually exclusive.
Berlin's concept of goods in conflict is central to my under-
standing of society's need to make choices regarding the definition
of marriage.
2
One good is the equal dignity of all persons. Another
good is a mother and a father as a child's birthright. These goods
are at least partially in conflict. Resolving that conflict-making a
morally responsible choice about the future of marriage that is faith-
ful to the essential purposes of the institution while at least recog-
nizing both of these goods-is a major aim of this book.
001229
WHAT Is MARRIAGE? 13
unmarried couples. For these family law professionals, marriage
can hardly be defined at all. They see marriage as radically subjec-
tive and almost infinitely malleable-really nothing more than a
collection of discrete relationships and private accommodations. At
one point in the report we learn that marriage should be understood
as "an emotional enterprise, filled with high returns and high risks.''
Beyond this, it turns out that each marriage is unique: "Different
couples arrive at different accommodations in their relationships,
and some depart from social conventions. Intimate relationships
often involve complex emotional bargains that make no sense to
third parties with different needs and perceptions."
13
Ali we can say
for sure, it appears, is that marriage is an emotional enterprise.
In 2003, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts issued
a ruling effectively requiring the state legislature to take steps to
redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. The essence of mar-
riage, the court said, is "the exclusive commitment of two individ-
uals to each other." The purposes of this commitment are "love,"
"mutual support," and a way of living that brings "stability to our
society." The justices also wrote that "marriage is at once a deeply
personal commitment to another human being and a highly pub-
lic celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy,
fidelity, and family."
14
In 2004, a superior court judge in the state of Washington
ruled that same-sex couples can marry under Washington State
law. In his ruling, Judge William L. Downing offered this defini-
tion: "To 'marry' means to join together in a close and permanent
way." Rephrased a bit, marriage is "a close personal commitment"
that "is intended to be permanent." Judge Downing added that
such close, intended-to-be-permanent commitments are "spiritu-
ally significant."
15
In 2005, a judge on the Supreme Court of the State of New
York ruled that a New York State law effectively limiting marriage
to male-female couples was unconstitutionaL In her ruling, Justice
Doris Ling-Cohan defined marriage as "the utmost expression of
a couple's commitment and love," and as "a unique expression of
a private bond and profound love between a couple." It is "highly
personal" and "the most intimate of relationships." People who
marry "publicly commit to a lifetime partnership with the person
001233
'
!l
n
j
ever pretended that marriage is not fundamentally about socially
approved sexual intercourse. Which is why, in law and cultures
everywhere, to consummate a marriage is to have sexual intercourse;
and why refusing to consummate a marriage with sexual intercourse
is ahnost universally viewed as a negation of the marriage and there-
fore as grounds for divorce; and why everyone knows that the term
"marriage bed" means the place where the spouses have sex.
After all, what one assumption does everyone make about
married couples? That they are involved in an emotional enter-
prise? Of course not. It's that the spouses are having sex with one
another! Yet today in the United States, as we debate the future of
the most important sexual institution ever devised by our species,
we seem quite determined to define it in strictly asexual terms. It's
like defining General Motors without mentioning cars.
There is another word almost entirely missing from the cur-
rently prevailing definitions of marriage. It's a word closely related
to matters of sexual embodiment and sexual intercourse. That word
is "children" -or what Andrew Sullivan calls ''breeding." Children
rarely make an appearance in the thin descriptions of marriage as
a personal commitment or an expression of love. Mostly, they are
not seen and not heard.
In fact, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in its
2002 opinion explicitly considers and then rejects as "inappropri-
ate" the view that marriage is centrally concerned with bearing
and raising children. The justices point out that people applying
for marriage licenses in Massachusetts do not have to prove that
they are fertile and intend to have children. Moreover, "the Com-
monwealth affirmatively facilitates bringing children into a fam-
ily regardless of whether the intended parent is married or
unmarried, whether the child is adopted or born into a family,
whether assisted technology was used to conceive the child, and
whether the parent or her partner is heterosexual, homosexual, or
bisexual."
18
The justices make their case with admirable clarity.
Marriage and procreation are hereby defined as separate and uncon-
nected. Adult emotional ties are over here where it says "marriage."
Children are over there.
Yet this way of understanding marriage presents a fonnida-
ble intellectual problem. For many centuries and across human
001236
culhJres, virrually all scholars, jurists, and other commentators on
marriage have emphasized that marriage as a human institution
is deeply connected to bearing and raising children. Surveying the
cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher sums it
up simply: "People wed primarily to reproduce."
19
Bertrand Russell was no friend of conventional sexual moral-
ity. But he recognized clearly enough that "it is through children
alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and
worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal instihJtion." Thus: "The
main purpose of marriage is to replenish the human population of
the globe."
20
Fisher is right. Russell was right. Without children, marriage
as instirution makes little sense.
After all, why did we humans invent marriage in the first
place? Why do we keep it around? Here is a proposition that can-
not be empirically proven, but that is almost certainly true. If human
beings did not reproduce sexually and did not start out in life as
helpless infants--,if, for example, new humans arrived on earth
fully grown, brought to society by storks-our species would never
have developed an institution called marriage. We would be doing
many interesting things, but getting married would not be among
them. Accordingly, to insist that we erase children from our formal
understanding of marriage comes very dose to insisting that mar-
riage itself makes no formal sense.
Notice also the circularity of this argument. What purports
to be a definition-marriage is not connected to children-is in fact
a redefinition that ends up negating the very thing being defined.
Before our very eyes, the task of understanding marriage becomes
a going-out-of-business sale.
In fact, the justices in Massachusetts, with seeming equanim-
ity, contemplate precisely this prospect: The concept of "marriage"-
"civil unions" or other similar terms, the justices make clear, simply
won't do-is so important that denying it to same-sex couples
means that they are "excluded from the full range of human expe-
rience." But why is this particular concept so important? On this
point, the justices are stunningly inarticulate. Marriage, they tell
us, is two people making a commitment to one another. We get
sugary pieties-marriage "fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven,
001237
I
20 THE FuTURE oF MARRIAGE
and that is worthy of strong social support. If we could move toward
this goal by embracing same-sex marriage, I would gladly embrace
it. If adopting same-sex marriage was likely to be part of a larger
societal shift leading to better marriages, less divorce, and less
unwed childbearing- or, more modestly, if it seemed likely that
adopting same-sex marriage would not significantly undermine
efforts to renew our wider marriage culture-! am confident that
most marriage advocates would favor its adoption. I know that I
would. But if adopting same-sex marriage is likely to impede that
larger goal, I will be against it.
Those who disagree with me can charge that I am proposing
a moral metric in which, regardless of the ultimate policy decision
on same-sex marriage, the rights of gays and lesbians take second
place to the needs of an existing social institution. The charge would
be acrurate. But for me the same moral metric applies to other mar-
riage issues tllat have nothing to do with homosexuality. For exam-
ple, I have testified before state legislatures in favor of reforms in
marriage law- such as longer waiting periods, mandatory coun-
seling, and in some cases a requirement to show fault-that would
place restrictions on "no fault" divorce, or what amounts to the
unilateral right to divorce. In short, I favor limiting certain adult
freedoms in the name of child well-being and the health of mar-
riage as an institution.
In the case of same-sex marriage, one priority ~ the particu-
lar rights and needs of same-sex couples-the right to equal respect,
the right to form loving, stable partnerships and families, and the
need for greater social acceptance. Another priority is the collec-
tive rights and needs of children-the right to know and be loved
by a mother and a father, and the need for as many children as pos-
sible to grow up under a strong shelter of marriage, our society's
most pro-child institution. To the degree that these two priorities
can be in harmony, or at least exist together in peace, I want to
embrace them both. To the degree that I must choose, with some
anguish I will choose children's collective rights and needs-I will
choose marriage as a public good-over the rights and needs of
gay and lesbian adults and those same-sex couples who are rais-
ing children.
001240
WHAT Is MARRIAGE? 21
The central issue in the same-sex marriage debate is not homo-
sexuality; it is marriage itself. In the next few chapters, we will seek
with fresh eyes to uncover an adequate answer to what might seem
to be the simplest of questions: What is marriage? First, we exam-
ine a few shards of evidence from the prehistory of our species,
including some findings from brain scientists who study the bio-
chemistry of human attachment. Next, a visit to ancient
Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, where marriage first emerged in
recorded history. Then to the Trobriand Islands, where marriage
today is quite unlike the pattern familiar to us. Then we can craft
a working definition of marriage for our time.
001241
THE RIVER VALLEYS 55
beware of approaching the women. It does not go well .... He who
has a wandering eye for the women cannot be keen. A thousand
men may be distracted from their own advantage. One is made a
fool .... Do not do it-it really is an abomination-and thou shall
be free from sickness of heart every

A later set of instructions from a father to a son, probably dating
from somewhere between 1100 and 800 BCE, echoes this advice,
saying, "Every man who is settled in a house should hold tl1e hasty
heart firm. Thou shouldst not pursue after a woman. Do not let her
steal away thy heart." There are also some thoughts about treating
a wife with respect:
Thou shouldst not supervise too closely thy wife in her own
house, when thou knowest that she is efficient. Do not say to her,
"Where is it? Fetch it for us!" when she has put it in the most
useful place. Let thy eye have regard, while thou art silent, that
thou mayest recognize abilities. How happy is it when thy
hand is with her!u
We moderns often seem to assume that couples long ago were
not as emotionally aware as we are today. Perhaps their spousal
feelings for, or against, one another simply didn't run as deep as
ours do. Perhaps marriage in those days wasn't actually about sex-
as-relationship and generativity after all, but instead "really" about,
say, property or social status.
Nonsense. Except in some respects among that very small
slice of humanity who are royalty or nobility-who at times do
marry largely in order to strengthen political and economic alliances
between groups-that has never been true. No one denies that
property and social status (and many other big realities as well)
affect all spheres of human social life, from education to medicine
to, yes, marriage. But what affects something is different from the
tlling itself. For almost all of humanity, marriage has always and
in all places been "really" about the male-female sexual bond and
the children that result from that bond. That was certainly true in
the two river valleys where this distinctive way of men and women
living together became a vibrant public institution.
001242
5
What Marriage Is
m IN ALL OR NEARLY ALL human societies, marriage is socially
approved sexual intercourse between a woman and a man, con-
ceived both as a personal relationship and as an institution, prima-
rily such that any children resulting from the union are-and are
understood by the society to be-emotionally, morally, practically,
and legally affiliated with both of the parents.
That's what marriage is. It's a way of living rooted in the
fundamental physiological and biochemical adaptations of our
species, as developed over the course of our long prehistory. It
first entered into recorded history in the two river valleys about
five thousand years ago. It is constantly evolving, reflecting the
complexity and diversity of human cultures. It also reflects one
idea that does not change: For every child, a mother and a father.
The exact wording of this definition is my own, but the def-
inition is anything but idiosyncratic. It rests on a large and grow-
ing mountain of scholarly evidence. It incorporates widely shared
conclusions about the meaning of marriage reached by the lead-
ing anthropologists, historians, and sociologists of the modern era.
As a result, I don't think that the essence of this definition should
be controversial. Let me briefly explain each phrase.
001243
WHAT MARRIAGE Is 97
rules, you definitely need a social institution. Both rights and insti-
tutions are essential components of any good society. But they are
separate things; neither can be reduced to the other. For this rea-
son, it is highly misleading to suggest that a primary social insti-
tution such as marriage can be defined as a "bundle of rights."
This is more than an academic quibble about a definition. In
today's discussion of marriage in the United States, by far the
biggest problem is the widespread refusal to respect or even
acknowledge the institutionality of marriage. It's as if we have for-
gotten what a social institution is.
Douglass C. North, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Eco-
nomics, can help us with this problem. He succinctly describes
social institutions as "the rules of the game" that "define the incen-
tive structures of society." Institutions are
the humanly devised constraints that structure human interaction.
They are made up of formal constraints (e.g., rules, laws, constitu-
tionsL informal constraints (e.g., norms of behavior, conventions,
self-imposed codes of conduct), and their enforcement character-
istics.H
For North, social institutions are primarily about what one may
not do.
Similarly, the anthropologist and marriage scholar A R. Rad-
cliffe-Brown reminds us that social institutions are "the ordering
by society of the interactions of persons in social relationships."
You know you are part of an institution when what you encounter
is not "haphazard conjunctions of individuals," but instead situa-
tions in which "the conduct of persons in their interactions with
others is controlled by norms, rules, or patterns." Accordingly, a
sign and consequence of participating in a social institution is that
"a person knows that he is expected to behave according to these
norms and that other persons should do the same."
15
Social institutions carry public meaning. Let's consider an
example. Just for fun, we'll make it about sex. Let's say that I am a
young adult who hopes and expects one day to marry. If I person-
ally believe that sexual fidelity in marriage is important, that is a
private opinion. But if the institution of marriage communicates
to everyone that sexual fidelity is important, and if the institution
001249
WHAT MARRIAGE Is 99
stop marrying, and when those who keep doing so cannot say why
and therefore are unable to treat their marriages seriously.
Children resulting from the union are-and are understnod btj the
society to morally, practically, and legally
affiliated with both of tl1e parents
A social institution-for what? Why do all human groups establish
this institution and keep it around? Follow the basic steps: From
sexual desire, the female and male of the species come together for
sexual union, from which develops an interpersonal relationship
and a shared way of life, which in turn every society surrounds
with elaborate rules and invests with important meanings. For what
purposes? Conversely, under what circumstances might a society
stop caring whether or how people married?
Let' s recall the basic development of marriage's long prehis-
tory. A series of "biological innovations" made human beings very
sexy creatures-not so that the mother and father will make a baby,
but so that the mother and father will stay together to mise the baby.
Let's also recall Lipit-lshtar of Sumer and Akkad: "I made the father
stand by his children. I made the child stand by his father."
TI1e oldest marriage laws of India are the Dharmasutras, prob-
ably dating from the third or second century BCE, and the lAw Code
of Manu, probably from the first century BCE or the first century
CE. A central preoccupation in these codes is the importance of pro-
creation within marriage. For example, a husband is obligated to
have sexual intercourse with his wife, particularly when she is fer-
tile.16 At the same time, "there is nothing in this world as sure to
shorten a man's life as consorting with someone else's wife." Inter-
course and pregnancy must take place only within a lawful mar-
riage: "Women were created to bear children, and men to extend
the line; therefore, scriptures have prescribed that the Law is to be
carried out .... "
17
And: "The excellence of the marriage determines
the excellence of the children that issue from it."
18
Let's go to rural southern Europe in the 1980s. Here, the
anthropologist Joan Frigole Reixach describes the centrality of pro-
creation to her informants' understanding of marriage:
001251
102 THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE
provides for the legitimation of children and defines their status in
relationship to the conjugal family and the wider kin group."
24
Social institutions exist to meet basic human needs. An insti-
tution that exists everywhere on the planet, in addition to what-
ever else it may be doing in this or that specific locale, is also
obviously meeting at least one primary, cross-cultural human need.
Regarding marriage, we have now identified that need. If human
beings were not sexually embodied creatures who everywhere
reproduce sexually and give birth to helpless, socially needy off-
spring who remain immature for long periods of time and who
therefore depend on the love and support of both of the parents
who brought them into existence, the world almost certainly would
not include the institution of marriage.
Primnrily
An important limitation of the Notes and Queries definition is its
failure to include the word "primarily" between the phrases "a
man and a woman" and "such that ... " Marriage is fundamentally
and everywhere a procreative institution, but that is by no means
all that marriage is.
For example, marriage is typically an economic as well as a
procreative alliance. Husband and wife, and often other relatives
on each side as well- remember the Trobriand uncle and the
urigubu--<:ooperate economically, dividing labor according to capac-
ity and social roles and in effect establishing kin-based economic
enterprises. For this reason, marriage in human societies is com-
monly a wealth-generating, asset-building institution. Even in the
United States, where this dimension of marriage is seldom recog-
nized and is less important than it is in village and tribal societies,
research shows that, compared with similar people who are unmar-
ried, married people earn more money and accumulate more
wealth.
25
Moreover, in many societies (although not in the United
States), children are viewed in economic terms more as assets than
as liabilities-another example of the ways in which marriage cross-
culturally tends economically to be a producing as well as a con-
suming institution. The economic dimensions of the marital bond
001254
WHAT MARRIAGE Is 103
typically both thicken and help stabilize marriage as a social
institution.
Marriage in many, probably most, human societies establishes
an alliance not only between the two spouses, but also between
two organized groups of kin. We saw this phenomenon in ancient
Mesopotamia. We saw it very clearly in the Trobriand Islands, where
each individual is a member not only of a nuclear family, but also
of a distinct matrilineage-each with its own history, customs,
magic, and status-as well as a member of one of four totemic clans,
which are also partly kin-based.
26
In traditional African societies,
this dimension of marriage appears to be even more important.
Each African marriage unites corporate kin groups-whether lin-
eages, subclans, or dans-which function as basic components of
political and social structureF
Some scholars, including Claude Levi-Strauss, have suggested
that marriage itself can be understood fundamentally as alliances
between kinship groups. This viewpoint is sometimes called the
"alliance theory" of marriage, as contrasted to the more commonly
advanced descent theory, which takes as its analytic starting point
the two spouses and their offspring. My own reading of the evi-
dence is that the alliance theorists often go too far. In their accounts,
married couples themselves all but disappear. Also, in common
with many Marxist scholars, alliance theorists frequently, and in
my view wrongly, regard women essentially as passive objects
whose "sexual services" are constantly being traded back and forth
by groups of men.
28
Think about your own marriage, or about any
other marriages that you have observed, or about the marriages
that we glimpsed in the two river valleys or in the Trobriand Islands,
and ask yourself if such harsh and impersonal theories of marriage
accurately match what you know of the human reality, the lived
experience, of marriage in diverse societies. To me, they do not.
The weight of evidence clearly supports the evolutionary
scholars and the descent theorists. To understand marriage and the
family, we begin with sex and birth-with the mother and her infant,
and through her the possibility of social fatherhood, and with father-
hood the possibility of expanded family relationships. These must
be our starting points, because these are the baseline dimensions
of human generativity and family life. They are the core biological
001255
120 THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE
Gary Witherspoon in Nnvnjo Kinship nnd Marringe.
63
Navajo men
during this period did these things for their children first and fore-
most by geHing married. Witherspoon points out that in Navajo soci-
ety, with its matrilineal descent system and its high valuation of
motherhood, the father-child relationship "is traced through another
person, the mother." Therefore, "The father-child bond is really just
another extension of the husband-wife bond."
64
The effectiveness,
even the possibility, of Navajo fatherhood as a hands-on social role
was intimately linked to the status of Navajo men as husbands.
Remember Malinowski: "The father is defined socially, and
in order that there may be fatherhood there must be marriage."
65
In the matrilineal societies of the Navajo, as in the Trobriand Islands,
the single most important precondition for effective fatherhood is
marriage, and a primary purpose of marriage is to give children
two responsible parents as a birthright.
Wl1at Good Is a Definition of Marriage?
Kind reader, I believe that we have found the core meaning of mar-
riage. Can it serve us as a guide for the future?
Perhaps not. We Americans have never felt particularly con-
strained by history or tradition, even our own, much less the inher-
ited ways of other peoples in far-off places. What counts for us is
today and the future. Yesterday hardly seems to matter-Ameri-
cans are probably less influenced by the past than any other peo-
ple on earth. We also don't care much for authority. We don't like
to bend the knee. If our institutions disappoint us, we change or
scrap them, or at least try very hard to do so. As Harold Rosen-
berg put it, our tradition is the tradition of the new. Because I'm
as American as the next fellow, I find much to admire in this way
of thinking.
The rest of this book is about the future of marriage in the
United States. What are the institution's strengths and weaknesses?
Can it remain-can it more fully become--our society's most pro-
child way of living? Or will it eventually become just an ersatz
word, a Hallmark greeting-card word, used to name our private
love relationships and perhaps qualify for some government
001259
benefits? Is it possible to reconcile our desire for equal treatment
for same-sex couples with our desire to protect and renew mar-
riage as our primary social institution?
Discerning the core meaning of marriage does not provide us
with answers to these questions. Understanding our inheritance
does not tell us what to do with it. At the same time, surely the
understanding helps. It tells us what the stakes are. It contributes
to moral and intellectual seriousness. As we debate the future of
marriage in one society, surely recognizing the basic structure of
marriage as a human institution offers us the right starting point,
the best place to stand in order to gain the clearest view ahead and
try to take our best steps forward.
At a minimum, we ought to consign to the cultural dustbin
those comically inadequate definitions of marriage that currently
dominate the debate in the United States. Chapter One contains
many examples of what I mean. All of these definitions make the
same basic point: Marriage is a private relationship based on mutual
caring. Most of them even follow the same rhetorical style. TI1ey
typically begin with the claim that marriage is constantly chang-
ing. Next they say that marriage in former days was really
ble; it was racist and sexist, and mostly it was all about property.
From these insights, the conclusion is obvious: If the deepest mean-
ing of marriage that marriage is always changing, and if mar-
riage historically has been pretty awful and crass, then why not
say that marriage today is whatever we want it to
if this formulation might help us achieve some useful social goal?
Here is an example of this idea, from Mike Anton, writing in
the Los Angeles Times in 2004:
Marriage as Americans know it today didn't exist 2,000 years ago,
or even 200 years ago. Rather than an unbending pillar of society,
marriage has been an extraordinarily elastic institution, constantly
adapting to religious, political and economic shifts and pliable in
the face of sexual revolutions, civil rights movements and chang-
ing cultural norms.
So that's what marriage is. Plus we learn:
Throughout most of human history, a man married a woman out
of desire-for her father 's goats, perhaps. Marriage was a
001260
WHAT MARRIAGE l s 123
rnother."
69
More recently he has written: "Few propositions have
more empirical support in the social sciences than this one: Corn-
pared to all other family forms, families headed by married, bio-
logical parents are best for children."
70
And again: "A central
purpose of the institution of marriage is to ensure the responsible
and long-term involvement of both biological parents in the diffi-
cult and time-consuming task of raising the next generation."
71
Based on this conclusion, he proposes a national strategy of "pro-
moting marriage" in order to revive "the two-natural-parent"
farnily.n
That's what David Popenoe thinks. Many "leading experts
and major studies" agree with him. For example, in 2002 a group
of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center,
concluded that "research clearly demonstrates that family struc-
ture matters for children, and the family structure that helps chil-
dren the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a
low-conflict marriage." And further: "Thus, it is not simply the
presence of two parents, as some have assumed, but the presence
of two biological parents that seems to support children's develop-
ment."73 Clearly "two biological parents" is scholar-speak for
"mother and father." And as we've seen, while marriage across
human societies has little to say about disembodied abstractions
called "parents/' marriage is centrally concerned with bringing
together into a common life the mother and father who make the
baby.
In no human society and in no period of history is it reason-
able to view marriage primarily as a "property arrangement." Nor
has marriage ever been viewed by any society primarily as a
"dynastic arrangement." Marriage typically does involve property
(as do religion, art, just about everything), but it can never be
reduced to a matter of property?
4
The claim that the Catholic Church had "nothing to do with
marriage'' during the Church's first millennium is preposterous.
From the first century onward, starting with Jesus' teachings on
divorce and remarriage, the clergy and theologians of the Church
developed a robust theology and law of marriage. By the fifth cen-
tury, after the Christianization of the Roman Empire, much of the
Chmch's internal canon law of marriage had become Roman law
001262
I don' t mean to single out as rmusual, or as particularly flawed,
this one description of marriage by Evan Wolfson. Countless oth-
ers are equally flawed, and in pretty much the same ways. The
result is a generalized conceptual disaster such that on one of the
key issues of our day, we as a society often seem literally not to
know what we are talking about. If this book captures with any
accuracy what marriage is, the dominant definition of marriage in
today's public debate is all but worthless. We must toss it out and
start over. Then and only then can we dream marriage's future.
001264
Gooos IN CoNFLICT 179
much smaller idea: marriage as another name for a private com-
mitted relationship.
We as a society can and should accept the dignity of homo-
sexual love and the equal worth of gay and lesbian persons. But
must we shrink and restructure marriage in these institution-maim-
ing, child-threatening ways in order to achieve this social process?
I do not suggest that the answer is easy. But to me, the answer is no.
Marriage exists for public purposes that can be specified.
Diminishing homophobia is not one of marriage's public purposes. Mar-
riage is institutionally alive to the fact of sexual embodiment and,
flowing from it, sexual reproduction. Regarding the subjective and
often complex issue of sexual orientation, marriage is institution-
ally deaf, blind, and dumb. It doesn't ask, tell, require, record, stip-
ulate, accept, judge, or reject on the basis of individual sexual desire.
Asking marriage to do so now-asking marriage to reconstitute
itseli according to the criterion of sexual orientation, and in doing
so to help change public attitudes about orientation-is asking mar-
riage to do something entirely unprecedented, and something for
which the institution is radically ill equipped.
When people seek to reshape and use marriage for a bad pur-
pose, such as fostering racism through anti-miscegenation laws,
the moral judgment is easy. When a major social institution is threat-
ened for a good cause, the moral judgment becomes difficult and
painful, because doing more of one good thing requires doing less
of another. That is our predicament today regarding same-sex mar-
riage. There is no true analogy between yesterday' s racists and
today' s defenders of maniage' s customary forms. The only accu-
rate analogy is between the advocates of anti-miscegenation laws
and the advocates of same-sex marriage, since each group wants
to recreate marriage in the name of a social goal that is fundamen-
tally unconnected to marriage.
The Right to Marry
When Andrew Sullivan insists that "only marriage" can make it pos-
sible for a young gay man to know that "his love has dignity," he is
grounding the plea for same-sex marriage in one of humanity's most
001268
180 T HE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE
powerful ideas. That idea is that all persons possess equal dignity,
and therefore that all are entitled to equal moral regard. Philoso-
phers increasingly view this idea as the essential universal moral
law-the starting point of ahnost all liberal moral thought and the
necessary foundation of any philosophical stance consistent with
basic human values.U
In the modern era, the idea of equal human dignity has been
expressed most concretely, and has achieved its greatest impact,
through the development and practice of human rights. The most
seminal human rights document in the world today, the United
Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, begins its pre-
amble with these properly famous words: "Recognition of the inher-
ent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members
of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace
in the world." The first sentence of the Declaration's first article reads:
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."
This concept of human rights based on inherent human dig-
nity is changing the world. Increasingly, talking about rights is the
way that we talk about many of our most important needs and
aspirations. Both in the United States and internationally, the lan-
guage of rights has become a primary language for expressing our
ideas of the good, especially regarding standards of justice. As the
Canadian human rights scholar Michael Ignatieff puts it,
Rights are not just instn1ments of the law, they are expressions of
our moral identity as a people. When we see justice done-for
example, when an unjustly imprisoned person walks free, when a
person long crushed by oppression stands up and demands her
right to be heard- we feel a deep emotion rise within us. That
emotion is the longing to live in a fair world . Rights may be pre-
cise, legalistic, and dry, but they are the chief means by which
humans express this longing.
12
The modern human rights revolution carries powerful impli-
cations for the institution of marriage. The most important is that
marriage is a fundamental human right, stemming from the equal
dignity of all persons. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
establishes this point clearly in Article 16: "Men and women of full
age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have
001269
182 THE fUTURE OF MARRIAGE
statement of human rights. As the legal scholar Mary Ann Glen-
don puts it, when we read it as a whole, we find that "the Decla-
ration's vision of liberty is inseparable from its call to social
responsibility." She states:
When read as it was meant to be, namely as a whole, it is an inte-
grated document that rests on a concept of the dignity of the
human person within the family. In substance, as well as in form,
it is a declaration of interdependence-interdependence of peo-
ple, nations, and rights.
1
'
So let us examine more fully what the Declaration tells us about
the right to marry and to found a family. Here is Article 16, the one
concerning marriage, in its entirety:
Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race,
nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a
family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during
marriage, and at its dissolution.
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full con-
sent of the intending spouses.
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of soci-
ety and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Here we see six important ideas. Marriage is intrinsically linked to
children. Men and women have equal rights in marriage. Marriage
requires the spouses' free consent. The natural family is society's
basic group unit. The institution of the family deserves protection.
And, marriage is a fundamental human right.
The key point is that each of these ideas is connected to all
the others. Freedom is linked to solidarity. Marriage is linked to
family. Rights imply responsibility. Institutions are not wished
away; they exist, and they matter. Together, these six ideas are not
perfect and do not tell us everything about marriage, but they ably
suggest marriage's fundamental shape and public purpose. Above
all, the Declaration clearly does not intend for these ideas to be
pulled apart and isolated from one another. It is certainly not say-
ing, or even remotely implying, that the master idea, the one right,
is that anyone has the right to marry anyone.
1
b
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