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Pillar

Sexuality & Family

The second pillar of a decent society is the institution of the family, which is built upon the comprehensive sexual union of man and woman. No other institution can top the family’s ability to transmit what is pivotal—character formation, values, virtues, and enduring love—to each new generation.

Israel’s Future-Oriented Natalism: A Q&A with Daniel Kane 

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Public Discourse

Supreme Court Take Notice: Two Sociologists Shift the Ground of the Marriage Debate

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Judges and justices who reasoned in favor of same-sex marriage based on social scientists’ “no differences” thesis must now contend with better research: Heterosexual married couples offer the best family structure for children, according to a new, rigorously researched sociological study.
Public Discourse

The Kids Aren’t All Right: New Family Structures and the “No Differences” Claim

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Two new peer-reviewed studies show that family structure matters and children do best when reared by their married biological mother and father.
Public Discourse

Taking (Conscience) Rights Seriously

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As a pluralistic liberal democracy, we should craft our laws so that individuals will never be unnecessarily coerced into violating their consciences.
Public Discourse

Why Sexual Integrity Isn’t Out-of-Date

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A book about sex by J. Budziszewski uses natural law arguments to persuade young adults of the moral benefits of purity.
Public Discourse

Marriage in Islam

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While Islam opposes same-sex marriage, its opposition to it and to President Obama’s stance is not a matter of hate or bigotry but a matter of principle.
Public Discourse

The Perils of Polygamy

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Recent empirical research suggests that, in virtually every respect, polygamy is socially detrimental—to society in general, to men, to women, and to children.
Public Discourse

Explaining Obama’s Evolution

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The electorate will often forgive—and can even embrace—a clean conversion story, where a politician honestly changes his mind and admits to it. But on marriage, such a story should not be available for the President, who was either alarmingly befuddled for several years or merely lying.
Public Discourse

The President’s Still Contorted Position on Same-Sex Marriage

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Given the legal principles involved in recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages, it’s hard to see any coherence in President Obama’s statement.
Public Discourse

Obama, Marriage, and the “Anti-Gay” Theme

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Yesterday’s statement about same-sex marriage by President Obama and last week’s departure of a gay-rights activist from the Romney campaign reveal important lessons.
Public Discourse

Two Steps from Reasonable About Marriage

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A thought experiment crystalizes the reality that the connection between sex and children is marriage’s central element, and consequently the contemporary idea of marriage as existing for the desires of adults makes little sense.
Public Discourse

Beyond Conservatism and Libertarianism

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Despite their disagreements, conservatives and libertarians often agree on many things. Resolving their differences, however, means rejecting philosophical skepticism and taking right reason seriously.
Public Discourse

Should Libertarians Be Conservatives?: The Tough Cases of Abortion and Marriage

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The libertarian commitment to free markets and limited government is best preserved within a broader conservative context.
Public Discourse

Is the Natural Law Persuasive?

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One can neither deny nor question the natural law’s persuasiveness except by asking questions, conducting inquiries, achieving understandings, reaching judgments, and making choices—all of which are the natural law at work.
Public Discourse

Privatizing Marriage Is Unjust to Children

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The primary business of the state is justice. Because children cannot be autonomous, adult society has an obligation in justice to provide institutional structures that protect their most basic interests.
Public Discourse

Privatizing Marriage Will Expand the Role of the State

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Libertarians are being taken in by rhetoric that sounds libertarian but, in fact, will lead to a dramatic shift in the balance of power between the state and civil society, indeed between the state and the natural order itself.
Public Discourse

Privatizing Marriage Is Impossible

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We cannot escape the fact that marriage is an intrinsically public institution. We can’t avoid making collective decisions about its meaning and purpose. If we don’t do it explicitly, we will end up doing it implicitly.
Public Discourse

After-Birth Abortion Still Kills People

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Whether we call it infanticide or after-birth abortion, ending the life of newborns kills human beings who are moral persons because they are rational beings.
Public Discourse

What Marriage Means in Today’s “New Normal”

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A detailed look at how working-class adults view marriage and the search for marital love.
Public Discourse

Intelligible Goods, Marriage, and Intellectual Conversion

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Unless we ask the “what” and “why” in ethical debate, we aren’t doing ethics. Debating ethics requires intellectual conversion and thus a commitment to intelligible reality.
Public Discourse

A Tale of Two Sex Hormones

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Artificial testosterone and estrogen use harms both individuals and society.
Public Discourse

Just War and the Iran Crisis

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It would be wrong for the United States to engage at this time in an attack on Iran or to participate substantially in an Israeli action.
Public Discourse

Marriage Decisions and the Importance of Judicial Reason

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Recent attacks on marriage threaten not only a foundational public institution but the rule of law itself and the legitimacy of the judicial branch.
Public Discourse

What’s at Stake in the “Same-Sex Marriage” Debate?

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The law cannot be divorced from reality, from nature. The moment this happens, law becomes arbitrary, the whim of the ruling power: it becomes tyranny.
Public Discourse

Marriage Unmoored

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Many expect that the Supreme Court will soon overturn the traditional marriage laws remaining on the books in forty-three states, a prospect that would have been unthinkable only a decade or two ago. What happened?

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