Marriage & Family
Maggie Gallagher gives the impression of one exasperated with the same-sex marriage debate: What about polygamy? Is that the natural next step? When people ask me this, my stock answer has become, “I don’t know, go ask the guys in the Harvard Law School faculty lounge.” Because if the California decision stands, there simply is…
One must read carefully before taking or rejecting the claims of such studies vociferously, but there’s a general point that can be extracted from news about a slowing down of the decrease of sexual activity among teens: The latest figures renewed the heated debate about sex-education classes that focus on abstinence until marriage, which began…
Thus is radical change forced upon a society via underhanded activism and deliberately skewed thinking. With an assumption as to what the society considers marriage to be, a court finds as follows: The appellate judges determined that there is no legal impediment in New York to the recognition of a same-sex marriage. The state Legislature…
The push for same-sex marriage must surely rank highly in recent history among movements that have doggedly ignored the opposition’s core objection, and last Thursday’s Providence Journal opinion pages encapsulate that myopia nicely. First, an editorial: … Gays who wed [in California] will help accustom others to this quiet revolution — chiefly by demonstrating that…
Apparently, it’s time to dust off the Federal Marriage Amendment; the California Supreme Court has redefined marriage to include same-sex couples. For those who may have forgotten, the most prominent version of the FMA read as follows: Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither…
Only in the deliberately abstruse logogriph of same-sex marriage advocacy could such a statement be made: “Divorce can be a more fundamental principle than marriage because it has to do with the due process that’s the bedrock of American jurisprudence,” Fox said before the hearing. Prohibiting it effectively denies “a fundamental principle of democracy.” Ah,…
I expect it won’t be long until courts begin to realize that this capricious obstinacy has no basis in rational adjudication: Two elderly sisters who live together have lost their final appeal in a discrimination case that claimed they were victims of discrimination under Britain’s civil partner law. Joyce Burden, 90, and her 82-year-old sister…
A recent study (PDF) produced by a group of family-values organizations, led by the Institute for American Values attempts to quantify the public monetary costs of divorce (emphasis in original): Based on the methodology, we estimate that family fragmentation costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion each and every year, or more than $1 trillion…
Doesn’t it often seem that modern society proceeds according the following order of operations? On emotional grounds, declare a change obviously beneficial and of minimal cost, with objections dismissed as outdated or inherently bigoted. Implement change. Ignore evidence that the naysayers were correct. Let things proceed to crisis level. Restate the original objections under the…
Is our society so corrupt that we must remake the argument against prostitution? The seediness, peril, and potential for corruption ought to be clear enough, but they are ultimately reasons for taxation and regulation. Have we been so seduced by an anything-your-heart-desires notion of freedom that we must hesitate over a state-level ban? Lovers of…