Ryan T. AndersonThinkers

Marriage is a personal relationship that serves a public purpose in a political community.

Marriage is a socially arranged solution for the problem of getting people to stay together and care for children that the mere desire for children, and the sex that makes children possible, does not solve.

Marriage is a state-regulated institution for no reason other than children. It is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.

Marriage is an institution that exist to make men and women responsible to each other and to any children that they might have.

Marriage is necessarily male-female because marriage exist for the state to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to procreate 'as well as' be father and mother to any children their union produces.

Marriage is society's least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other permanently and exclusively and to take responsibility for their children.

Same-sex marriage is harmful to the state in that if marriage is seen in terms of a mere subjective emotional bond rather than in terms of procreation, then much of its core meaning is out the window... the pledge for permanence and sexual exclusivity, the refusal of polygamy, and the fact that marriage is oriented toward family life and shaped by its demands.

Same-sex marriage is harmful to the state in that to suggest that marriage is about nothing more than 'emotional commitment' then the door to polygamy is opened, because in every case, every argument on the basis of equality, destigmatization, extending economic benefits also applies to polygamy.

Same-sex marriage is not in the interest of the state because the state is interested only in the production of healthy, upright, productive members of society... which depends on the unique gifts which only a mother-father pair can bring to a child's upbringing.

Same-sex marriage is not in the interest of the state, which cares nothing for romance and recognizes male-female sexual relations only because these alone produce new human beings.