Author Archives: Sherif Girgis
Some people hope that Pope Francis will change the Church’s teaching on contraception. He won’t. He couldn’t even if he wanted to—as Church history and Scriptures show. Part two of two.
The Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception, common to all Christian denominations for 1900 years, is not arbitrary. It reflects a moral truth. And the Catholic Church can never revise it. Part one of two.
Courts heighten scrutiny of policies that classify people by sex and other “suspect” traits. But laws defining marriage as a male-female union are different in structure. The very form of policies based on the male-female pairing—unlike every other classification—demonstrates their connection to the common good. So courts shouldn’t subject them to the special scrutiny applied to other laws that classify by sex.
The Supreme Court closely scrutinizes policies involving racial, sexual, and other “suspect” classifications. But unlike almost every other classification imaginable, marriage laws use a criterion necessarily linked to an inherently good social purpose that we didn’t just invent. This criterion isn’t truly suspect and shouldn’t get heightened scrutiny.
We are all called to defend marriage so that the truth can change hearts, minds, and lives. As the early pro-life activists did, we must invest the long-term political, legal, cultural, and spiritual capital to win down the line. The final installment in a three-part series.
The next generation of true culture-makers will be shaped purely by bad philosophy if its arguments go unanswered. As individuals and communities, we will be swayed by moral thought no matter what: the only question is whether it will be well thought out. The second in a three-part series.
Many Christians question the value of philosophical arguments for conjugal marriage, preferring to appeal to revelation. But our natural moral knowledge in some ways precedes revelation and helps us to understand it. The first of a three-part series.
Prof. Charles Reid thinks love makes a marriage. He claims we think sex makes a marriage. In truth, comprehensive union makes a marriage. And getting marriage right matters for everyone.
What happened yesterday at the courthouse matters, and we must keep up our witness to the truth about marriage, by word and deed, until it is safely beyond judicial overreach.
Marriage as a human good, not marriage law, has an objective core whose norms the state has an interest in tracking and supporting—in a way that respects everyone’s freedom.
The controversy over the HHS mandate is not a spat about wonkish detail or tribal privilege. It remains a struggle for the principle of religious freedom, the soul of civil society.
Morality is not about keeping as long a leash as you can on the harms you cause. It is about keeping upright intentions and rejecting unfair tradeoffs—neither of which Obama’s proposed revision even pretends to affect.
In a discipline whose point is dispassionate reasoning and discourse, some would shut down debate and silence dissenters on a deep and complex moral-political issue. And the view they would anathematize, far from irrational, is more coherent and more compelling than their slippery and ill-defined 'default'.
Prominent bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Robert P. George on the role of bioethics in a democracy and the dangers of eugenics.
Prominent bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Robert P. George on the danger of discounting ethics and overselling science.
A reply to Northwestern Law Professor Andrew Koppelman's second critique of "What is Marriage?"
A reply to NYU Law Professor Kenji Yoshino’s second critique of “What is Marriage?”
A response to FamilyScholars Blogger Barry Deutsch.
A response to Northwestern Law Professor Andrew Koppelman.
A response to NYU Law Professor Kenji Yoshino.
A recent compromise on the same-sex ‘marriage’ debate granted too much to revisionists and too little to traditionalists. A better compromise will respect the societal importance of marriage while also providing for the real needs of domestic partners.
The Obama apologists are at it again, this time attacking Archbishop Charles Chaput for speaking out against their candidate's pro-abortion views. But the latest salvo from Doug Kmiec is a tangled web of falsehoods and fallacies.
