David Blankenhorn’s multitudinous cybercritics (who seem to imagine that David Boies brilliantly tricked him into damaging admissions when he testified as an expert witness in the Prop 8 trial) seem not to have a clue about who David is: a man who genuinely believes both in the “equal dignity of homosexual love” as he wrote in his book, The Future of Marriage, and that marriage must be protected in law as the union of husband and wife.

David’s view in a nutshell: Social institutions arise and persist over time because they address persistent problems. The problem marriage attempts to address is sex difference, or, as David likes to put it, “embodiment.” The purpose of marriage cross-culturally throughout history is “affilliation,” i.e. the assignment of a mother and a father to every child. The marriages of sterile or older couples do not contradict this purpose, because any child of these marriages (whether via birth or adoption) would have both a mom and a dad even if no such child ever actually comes into being. Same-sex marriage, by contrast, would end affiliation as the purpose of marriage. The institution would be taken over and used to address a new problem: sexual orientation.

Marriage was not designed to address this question and should not be misused for this purpose, however noble that purpose is (and David clearly thinks demonostrating social respect for committed gay love is a noble purpose).

David Blankenhorn is, in other words, the embodiment of how a person with not only no animus, but no disagreement with homosexuality, could nonetheless support Prop 8.

Lawyers do not want expert witnesses blabbing until the judge rules. But Elizabeth Marquardt, his colleague at the Institute for American Values, blogs about David Blankenhorn’s testimony here.