This objection comes at the end for a reason. By now, as promised in the introduction, this Article has made a case for enshrining the conjugal view of marriage and addressed many theoretical and practical objections to it, without appeals to revelation or religious authority of any type. This reflects a crucial difference between marriage and matters of purely religious belief and practice, such as the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation, the enlightenment of the Buddha, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, and rules concerning ritual purification, fasting and prayer. Unlike these matters, the human good of marriage, and its implications for the common good of human communities, can be understood, analyzed, and discussed without engaging specifically theological issues and debates.
Of course, many religions do have ceremonies for recognizing marriages and teach the conjugal view of marriage (or something much closer to it than to the revisionist view). And many people are motivated to support the conjugal view for reasons that include religious ones. But none of these facts settles the debate about which view of marriage should be embodied in public policy. After all, some religions today teach, and motivate people's advocacy of, the revisionist view. Thus, religious motivations must disqualify both the conjugal and the revisionist views from policy debates, or neither.
Even so, some would say, enshrining the conjugal view of marriage involves privileging a controversial moral belief. Again, such an argument would equally exclude the revisionist view. Both would involve claims about which types of relationship we should publicly honor and encourage - and, by implication, which we should not. The revisionist view, at least in the version described above, would honor and privilege monogamous samesex unions but not, for example, polyamorous ones. As we have pointed out,119 our law will teach one lesson or another about what kinds of relationship are to be encouraged, unless we abolish marriage law, which we have strong reasons not to do.120 In this sense, there is no truly neutral marriage policy.
Finally, it is important to realize that there is nothing special in these respects about marriage. Many other important policy issues can be resolved only by taking controversial moral positions, including ones on which religions have different teachings: for example, immigration, poverty relief, capital punishment, and torture. That does not mean that the state cannot, or should not, take a position on these issues. It does mean that citizens owe it to one another to explain with candor and clarity the reasons for their positions, as we have tried to do here.
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Part IV: Conclusion
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