A growing number of state and federal judges have argued that there is no rational basis for defining marriage in law as a heterosexual union, and that such a definition must therefore be based either on religious beliefs or on prejudice against homosexuals. Patrick Lee and Robert George’s new book constitutes undeniable evidence to the contrary.
The authors turn the courts’ “lack of rational basis” argument on its head by showing that, unless marriage is understood as a conjugal union, there is no principled, non-arbitrary basis for calling some human relationships “marriages” and others not. It can’t be sexual intimacy that distinguishes married from non-married couples, since not every sexually intimate relationship is a marriage. It can’t be sharing a household, since that would imply that communities of nuns, or widowed sisters living together, are married. The same is true of raising children together. And (pace Chief Justice Marshall in the Massachusetts Goodridge decision) singling out marriage because it is a monogamous and permanent relationship ignores the question of why it should have those features — a question that, the authors claim, can be given a principled answer only if one understands marriage as a conjugal union.
Comments