Matthew J. Franck is the Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute.
Michael Klarman's history of the push for same-sex marriage shows just how recently it's developed and how its leaders lack substantive arguments for the nature and purpose of marriage itself.
Date posted: 2013-02-12
The case for same-sex marriage, as articulated in a new book that debates the issue, still refuses to recognize that civil society needs real marriage, as it has always existed, to preserve itself.
Date posted: 2012-12-13
If tradition is not a good reason to limit marriage to a man and a woman, it is also not a good reason to limit it to only two people.
Date posted: 2012-02-20
Race and sex play qualitatively different roles in our interactions with each other, making sex rationally relevant to our social and political policies in a way that race is not.
Date posted: 2011-08-25
After publishing articles recently in the Washington Post and First Things, both arguing that the defenders of conjugal marriage between a man and a woman should not be tarred as irrational bigots, "haters," or "theocrats" by the advocates of same-sex marriage, I received e-mail messages from likeminded friends hailing me for my "courage." I was grateful for their appreciation, but a little mystified at what I took to be overstatement. I find little reason to hail the "courage" of someone who defends the consensus view of the whole history of human civilization -- that marriage is a bedrock social institution that unites a man and a woman in order to make a family -- as rational and well intended.
Date posted: 2011-06-20