:: Netmarcos' Notes ::

:: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 ::

Maggie Gallagher opines on Marriage on National Review Online that Gay marriage is not some sideline issue, it is the marriage debate.

The fantasy of certain (not all) libertarians is that we can privatize marriage and the result will be a utopia of religiously created social order. But if marriage is just a religious rite, then it cannot also be a key social institution in a secular, pluralist nation. We do not depend on faith communities to ensure the education of children or the maintenance of private property because we understand that society needs educated citizens and a stable realm of property in order to prosper. The question is: Do we also need marriage?

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Marriage is a universal human institution. We do not know of any culture that has survived without a reasonably functional marriage system. Perhaps stray reproduction by single moms plus immigration can sustain America over the long haul. A look at Europe, however, does not make one sanguine. The attempt to substitute the state for the family leads not only to gargantuan government, but to miniscule families: If marriage and children are just one of many private lifestyle choices, people stop getting married and they stop having children in numbers large enough to replace the population. (One child is enough to make you a mother. When marriage is unreliable, just how foolhardy do you expect women to be?). The U.N. is now issuing urgent warnings about European depopulation.

You should read it all.

:: Mark 10:07 AM [+] ::
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