You Must Read This Article (Not Mine)

Earlier this year I reposted my thoughts from last year on same-sex marriage. My friend strangedavid made the post better by thoughtfully pushing back in the comments section and driving me to explain more. Though I did not retreat from my argument from Christian theology that same-sex marriage is a contradiction in terms, strangedavid forced me to admit that my secondary, secular arguments against same-sex marriage were weaker—as I put it, not a “stop sign” but a “speed bump.”

For this reason I’d like to introduce you to a secular stop sign. In their landmark article “What Is Marriage?” in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson clearly define what they call the “conjugal view” of marriage. They defend that definition as the only logically coherent one and the one most beneficial to the common good, and they press difficult questions on what they call the “revisionist view.” And they do all of this with no recourse to religious sources but rather purely based on biology, sociology, constitutional law, and logic.

Every person with an opinion on same-sex marriage, whether strident or squishy, ought to read this article. If same-sex marriage is correct, then the arguments of Girgis et al. can be confronted and demolished by reason, not merely dismissed as bigotry. But if they can’t be overcome by reason . . . .