Family Restoration and the Necessity of Marriage

A great deal of litigation is happening over marriage law and policy.  Some of us may be thinking that a movement to expand marriage has so much momentum that it simply cannot be averted.  Many of us, however, still need to understand how marriage law affects marriage policy - and how that policy affects future generations.

 

In February the Virginia Lawyer Magazine published my work on why States need to be free to regulate their own domestic relations policy.  If you want to understand why this is so important, and how state policy affects your family you can read the article that was widely read by Virginia lawyers, judges, and legislators throughout the Commonwealth at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2427462. 

 

Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation describes what every person who understand the importance of marriage must do. He writes:

 

"We must continue to witness to the truth about marriage, find new ways to make the reasoned case about what marriage is, and work to protect our freedoms to do so for the next generation. All of this must be done in service of the long-term goal of restoring a culture of marriage.  This requires both political and cultural efforts. Those who emphasize religious-liberty protections are somewhat right, for to even have the freedom to build countercultural institutions that preserve the truth about marriage we will at the very least need to protect the liberty — including religious liberty — to do so. But they are wrong in thinking we can protect religious liberty without defending the substantive view we seek the liberty to hold and act on. In order to protect our liberty with respect to marriage, we must persuade our neighbors that our views about marriage are reasonable, and thus that our rights to govern our lives in accord with those views should be respected. In doing this, we must understand that, for many of our neighbors, the argument for marriage hasn't been heard and rejected; it simply hasn't been heard. We must make that argument in new and creative ways. In the short run, the legal battle over the definition of marriage may be an uphill struggle. But in the long run, those who defend marriage as the union of a man and woman will prove to be prophetic. First, because when people do hear a compelling case for marriage, they respond accordingly. And second, because the logic of marriage redefinition ultimately leads to the dissolution of marriage into nothing more than a social mess of consenting adult love of manifold sizes and shapes." 

 

Anderson's entire article can be read at National Review Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378538/marriage-where-do-we-go-here-ryan-t-anderson.

 

To read about that compelling case for marriage, go to "Marriage, State Domestic Relations Power, and Family Strength," at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2427462. For American culture to experience family restoration, that process relies on the strength of marriage as the foundation for families.