Jean Bethke Elshtain Famous Quotes
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To this, it is countered that the same-sex conception of marriage and family is, and must be, parasitic upon the demise of conjugal society, wherein biological parents are not taking responsibility for the rearing and education of their own children. Having no natural justification, the dominion of two adults of the same sex over children in their custody is crucially dependent upon the state to enforce their claim to these children as against the claims of the biological parent(s). Same-sex marriage is necessarily a political form of social order, invoking the power of the state to make it so.
Like the market, conjugal society, consisting of marriage and family, is not the creation of the state. It is a pre-political institution, rooted in sex difference and procreation. Given the pre-political nature of conjugal society, the state regulates it rightly by recognizing it as a natural fact with its own norms and purposes. The state ought not treat conjugal society as its own creation. Where there is evidence that parents are failing in their duties to each other or to their children, the state may intervene. Absent this, however, the state ought to leave conjugal society, rooted in the union of one man and one woman, alone.
There is no allusion to marriage or family in the Constitution. It is barely mentioned in the Federalist Papers or elsewhere in the ratification debates. The reason why the founders "ignored" the family was that it was not an issue for them. It was not a social problem. On the contrary, the family was the accepted substratum of society. It
We must never lose the language of justice, for it reminds us of what is at stake and of the importance of keeping justice itself alive in how we fight.
Moreover, the attempt by advocates of same-sex marriage to sever marriage from procreation is more chimerical than real.35 One would be hard-pressed to find an advocate of same-sex marriage who would accept the proposition that same-sex couples should be given the right to marry but that right does not entail a right to procreate and rear children. Were marriage and family truly severable, as the contractual view suggests, the one would not entail the other. However, advocates of same-sex marriage want it both ways. They want the contractual view of marriage plus the option of raising children.
