What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense

by Sherif Gergis, Ryan T. Anderson, Robert P. George

Overview

Until very recently, no society had seen marriage as anything other than a conjugal partnership: a male–female union. What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage as something other than the conjugal union of husband and wife is a mistake.

Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, this book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences. Since then, it has been cited and debated by scholars and activists throughout the world as the most formidable defense of the tradition ever written. Now revamped, expanded, and vastly enhanced, What Is Marriage? stands poised to meet its moment as few books of this generation have.

Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George offer a devastating critique of the idea that equality requires redefining marriage. They show why both sides must first answer the question of what marriage really is. They defend the principle that marriage, as a comprehensive union of mind and body ordered to family life, unites a man and a woman as husband and wife, and they document the social value of applying this principle in law.

Most compellingly, they show that those who embrace same-sex civil marriage leave no firm ground—none—for not recognizing every relationship describable in polite English, including polyamorous sexual unions, and that enshrining their view would further erode the norms of marriage, and hence the common good.

Finally, What Is Marriage? decisively answers common objections: that the historic view is rooted in bigotry, like laws forbidding interracial marriage; that it is callous to people’s needs; that it can’t show the harm of recognizing same-sex couplings or the point of recognizing infertile ones; and that it treats a mere “social construct” as if it were natural or an unreasoned religious view as if it were rational.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781641771474
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has been chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and has served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds J.D. and M.T.S. degrees from Harvard Universityand the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-one honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal.

Sherif Girgis is an attorney in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. student in philosophy at Princeton. He has served as law clerk to Judge Thomas Griffith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court of the United States. He earned his J.D. from Yale Law School, a B.Phil. in philosophy from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy with highest honors from Princeton. He is a coauthor of Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (2017) and of several book chapters and academic articles in law and philosophy journals. The views expressed in this book and his other work are his own and not those of his law firm

Ryan T. Anderson is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and the founder and editor-in-chief of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, and he received his doctoral degree in political philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (2018) and Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom (2015), and he is a coauthor of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (2012) and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (2017).

Table of Contents

A Note on Authorship ix

Acknowledgments xi

From Epithalamion Edmund Spenser xiii

Introduction 1

Two Views of Marriage 1

Why This Book Now 4

What We Will Show 6

What Our Argument Is Not 10

1 Challenges to Revisionists 13

The State Has an Interest in Regulating Some Relationships? 15

Only If They Are Sexual? 16

Only If They Are Monogamous? 18

2 Comprehensive Union 23

Comprehensive Unifying Acts: Mind and Body 24

Comprehensive Unifying Goods: Procreation and Domestic Life 28

Comprehensive Commitment: A Rational Basis for Norms of Permanence and Exclusivity 32

3 The State and Marriage 37

Why Civil Marriage? 38

Is Marriage Endlessly Malleable? 46

4 What's the Harm? 53

Weakening Marriage: Making It Harder to Realize 54

Weakening Marriage and Expanding Government: Eroding Marital Norms 56

Making Mother or Father Superfluous 58

Threatening Moral and Religious Freedom 62

Undermining Friendship 65

The "Conservative" Objection 66

5 Justice and Equality 73

The Case of Infertility 73

The Injustice of Bans on Interracial Marriage 77

6 A Cruel Bargain? 83

Practical Needs 84

Dignitary Harm 85

Personal Fulfillment, Public Recognition 88

7 Conclusion 95

Appendix: Further Reflections on Bodily Union 99

Afterword Ryan T. Anderson Robert P. George 110

Notes 114

Index 132

Editorial Reviews

What Is Marriage? There is the question. Thanks to these three eloquent authors for so cogently reminding us of that, and for showing us how reflective reason answers it.”
—Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York

“What Is Marriage? is the most insightful, eloquent, and influential defense of marriage as it has been historically and rightly understood. People of all traditions—and everyone who cares about the future of this central and sacred social institution—owe Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George an extraordinary debt.”
—Meir Soloveichik, Associate Rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun and Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University

“With many countries on the verge of redefining a basic social institution, What Is Marriage? issues an urgent call for full deliberation of what is at stake. The authors make a compelling secular case for marriage as a partnership between a man and a woman, whose special status is based on society’s interest in the nurture and education of children.”
—Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University

“What a joy to see this book by Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, which presents the most philosophically astute and historically accurate defense of traditional marriage to date. It exposes the incoherence of attempts to radically redefine marriage by showing the inherent wisdom in what is our oldest social institution.”
—David Novak, J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair in Jewish Studies, University of Toronto

“Before we even consider fundamentally altering an institution that has been the foundation for all of our family laws, we should understand why marriage has been defined as a conjugal union across centuries and cultures. A lot more is at stake than the definition of a word, and this book reveals just how much is at stake. Its defense of marriage is philosophical and sociological, not theological, but people of all faiths will find it illuminating and edifying.”
—Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, Zaytuna College

“This book brilliantly explains why the definition of marriage is so critical and why the strengthening of marriages is absolutely essential to our freedom and our future.” —Dr. Rick Warren, Author of The Purpose Driven Life and Pastor of Saddleback Church

From the Publisher