Defeating Congress’s attempt to enshrine a faulty definition of marriage is just the first step.
Defeating Congress’s attempt to enshrine a faulty definition of marriage is just the first step.
G . K. Chesterton famously wrote, “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes being corrected.”
Nowhere is Chesterton’s dictum more evident than in contemporary attitudes toward debates about marriage. The way some erstwhile conservatives talk, the marriage ship has sailed. Obergefell is the law of the land, and we must move on. There are, we are told, more pressing battles to fight. The transgender insanity is at our doorstep, and we must get past the marriage question and unite against the unholy combination of social contagion and intentional grooming that will leave thousands of vulnerable children and teenagers maimed and mutilated.
The sentiment is understandable. “Family-friendly drag shows” and puberty blockers for kids are a shock to our system. But abandoning the defense of natural marriage to resist the biological and sexual anarchy around us would be a mistake. This is because natural marriage is the bulwark against biological and sexual anarchy. Our task is not to conserve the losses of the past, but to recover what we have lost. This is no easy task. It will require the same kind of patient and courageous persistence that has marked the pro-life movement over the last 50 years and that led to the overthrow of Roe last summer. What might such persistence look like?
The first order of business is to resist any further erosion of natural marriage in our nation’s laws. This includes ensuring that the “[Dis]Respect for Marriage Act” is soundly defeated in the United States Senate, should it be taken up in the lame-duck session. The editors of National Review made a capable case for such opposition when the bill passed the House this past summer (with Republican support).
In the long term, we must build our case on reality and appeals to reason and human nature. The state’s interest in marriage is not about recognizing a contract between individuals; it’s about preserving the basic unit of society that binds generations together, that links us to the past and to the future. It’s about securing the natural family, consisting of a mother and a father united in a lifelong covenant for the purpose of mutual help, companionship, and the bearing and rearing of children.
Others, such as Ryan Anderson, Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Andrew Walker, have made this case in much more detail. However, in addition to their works, we might also consider the work of Katy Faust and her organization, Them Before Us. Just as the pro-life movement distilled its case into the simple statement, “Unborn children have the right to life,” Faust and her colleagues have built their organization on this fundamental premise: “Children have a natural right to their mother and father.”
This conviction cuts through a number of pressing issues in our culture, including surrogacy and adoption. But more basically, it cuts to the heart of the definition of marriage. As Faust puts it, “Marriage is a matter of justice for children because it’s the only relationship that unites the two people to whom children have a natural right — their mother and father. It is a comprehensive union of spouses with a special link to children. Each of its norms — permanence, monogamy, and exclusivity — distinctly benefit children.”
Beyond the logical arguments, we must also recognize the role that emotional appeals play in our public debates. The Left frequently appeals to compassion for desperate women with an unwanted pregnancy in its commendation of abortion rights, completely ignoring the child tucked away in the womb. The pro-life movement has effectively countered this emotional appeal by putting forth the unborn child as worthy of compassion and love. Moreover, stories of the harm that abortion causes women have led many to consider the issue afresh, with an openness to the dignity and value of both mother and child.
Similarly, the growing presence of de-transitioners may help to turn the tide on the transgender craze. Seeing the bitter fruit of puberty blockers, top surgery, and castration may arrest the advance of such insanity (and hopefully lead to the arrest of opportunistic doctors and medical professionals). But more than that, the natural recoil that many feel to the unnatural and dehumanizing reality of transgenderism may provide an opportunity for many in our culture to reconsider the reality of biology, nature, and the wonder of manhood and womanhood.
Currently, the Left is using the acceptance of LGB to press for TQ+. In response, the Right must recognize that they are a coherent package, united by the elevation of sexual desire to a place of supremacy. Our task will be to direct and channel the recoil from trans-insanity and press it to its logical conclusion — sexuality is powerful, and it cannot be in the driver’s seat. You cannot put unnatural sexual desires in the driver’s seat and not end up in sexual anarchy. In fact, you can’t put natural sexual desires in the driver’s seat and not end up in sexual anarchy.
That’s why virtually all human societies have bound sexuality with covenants and oaths, made before God and witnesses, in order to constrain and channel the fire of sexual desire in fruitful directions, lest it burn uncontrolled and consume the whole social order. To quote Chesterton again, “Christianity established rule and order, but the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.” We build walls around the city so that life can happen inside.
Which brings us to the final appeal that we must make. Appeals to logic and reason are fundamental. Reality is reality, whether anyone recognizes it or not. When tethered to reason and truth, emotional appeals are valuable, since we are not merely logic machines. But both rational and emotional appeals are best delivered by those with credibility.
Just as the rational arguments and emotional appeals for the life of the unborn have best been delivered when adorned by a pro-life movement that funds and staffs crisis pregnancy centers and actively engages in foster care and adoption, so also the arguments for natural marriage will best be delivered when they are grounded in strong, stable, and happy marriages in which children thrive. Such marriages and households require resilient communities grounded in the moral order established by the living God.
And this means that we can’t be content to simply roll back Obergefell and its pretended mandate for same-sex mirage. We must aim for the public recovery of marriage in toto. Our aim must be to re-establish marriage as the union of one man and one woman for one lifetime. Our aim must be to regard divorce like the amputation of a limb — necessary in extreme circumstances, but of far more significance than simply a change of clothes. Likewise for other forms of sexual immorality. We cannot wink at pornography, fornication, and adultery, and then draw an arbitrary line at the alphabet soup of sexual identities.
The battle for marriage and family is far from over. The situation is dire, and the devastation is real. But therein lies an opportunity. And so let us resist the temptation of fatalism. Who knows what the future holds? In the meantime, let’s be ready, with sturdy arguments, with compassion for the refugees from the Sexual Revolution, and with courage and fortitude to act when the opportunity comes. Marriage has always been worth conserving. How much more is it worth recovering.