A Brief Book Notice from Books At a Glance
An excellent resource on an important contemporary topic.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Challenges to Revisionists
2 Comprehensive Union
3 The State and Marriage
4 What’s the Harm?
5 Justice and Equality
6 A Cruel Bargain?
7 Conclusion
Appendix: Further Reflections on Bodily Union
Selected Quotes
- Marriage is, of its essence, a comprehensive union: a union of will (by consent) and body (by sexual union); inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment, whatever the spouses’ preferences. (6)
- First, unlike ordinary friendship, marriage unites people in all their basic dimensions. It involves a union of minds and wills that unfolds in a sharing of lives and resources. But marriage also includes bodily union. (24)
- If something would serve an important good, if people have a right to it, if private groups cannot secure it well, everyone suffers if it is lost, and the state can secure it without undue cost, then the state may step in—and should. (41)
- The firm links between stable marriage and children’s welfare, and between children’s welfare and every dimension of the common good, give the state strong reasons to recognize marriage, libertarian qualms notwithstanding… It is a human good with a fixed core that we are equally wise to recognize and unable to reshape. (52)
- Conjugal marriage laws reinforce the idea that the union of husband and wife is, on the whole, the most appropriate environment for rearing children—an ideal supported by the best available social science. (58)
- There is no general right to marry the person you love, if this means a right to have any consensual relationship recognized as marriage. There is only a general right not to be prevented from forming a true marriage. (81)
- Marriage is a comprehensive union. The state has excellent reasons to recognize it, and excellent reasons to enact the correct view of it. (83)
- This brings us to the point with which we began this book. Our argument here has not been about homosexuality, as important and disputed as that subject is. In the first and last analysis, what we have debated—what we have defended—is marriage. (93)