Truth Overruled: the Future of Marriage & Religious Freedom R\An T
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Wheatle\ Papers on Famil\ Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage & Religious Freedom R\an T. Anderson The Heritage Foundation Wheatle\ Roundtable on Famil\ Brigham \oung Universit\ March 24, 2016 ©R\an T. Anderson R\an T. Anderson The Heritage Foundation Ryan T. Anderson researches and writes about justice and moral principles in economic thought, health care and education as the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at The Heritage Foundation. He is also editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J. and the co-author with Princeton’s Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (Encounter Books, December 2012). The three also co-wrote the article What is Marriage? in the winter 2011 issue of Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, First Things, Weekly Standard, National Review, among others. Anderson received his B.A. from Princeton University (Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude), and his M.A. and Ph.D from Notre Dame. Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage & Religious Freedom I want to start as any good about African Americans and he cared conservative should by turning back the about the family and he saw that if the clock 50 years. I would turn back the family broke down in that community, clock 50 years to the Moynihan Report. a whole host of other consequences in Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote terms of poverty and social mobility and a report on the state of the black family crime and education and employment in the United States and he pointed would be the consequences and he out that births to single mothers in the cared about all of those things. He was general population were 5% but within a former Secretary of Labor; I think he the African American community was actually Secretary of Labor when they were 25%.1 His conclusion was he wrote the report. This is why he did something to this effect: “Something this. has gone wrong. Something has Fast forward to today. Remember gone wrong within that community, the statistics I mentioned was 5% something has gone wrong with that general population and 25% African understanding of human sexuality, American population. Today it is that understanding of marriage.” He 40% of all American children born to was then roundly criticized for being a single mothers, 50% of the Hispanic racist. They said Senator Moynihan was community, and it is over 70% of the blaming the victims, Senator Moynihan African American community.2 Gays was doing this because he had and lesbians aren’t to blame for this. antagonism, animus, prejudice, bigotry Those realities are consequences of against African Americans. The exact heterosexuals who bought into a liberal opposite was the case. Moynihan was a ideology about sex and marriage and liberal professor of sociology at Harvard then failed to live out the truth about University, he was a Democrat senator marriage. The reason I open this way from the state of New York. He wrote is that the redefinition of marriage by his report precisely because he cared five unelected judges this past June the wheatle\ institution | 1 Ryan T. Anderson simply takes the logic of that 50 year think the past 50 years have been a change from the Moynihan Report good thing for America’s children, until today and enshrines it into our for America’s women, mothers, wives, constitutional law. It is not that gays for society at large, then you can and lesbians are to blame for the share the extension of that logic by breakdown of the family. It is that the Supreme Court. If you think this the breakdown of the family and the past 50 years have been a bad thing, ideas that animated the breakdown a bad thing for America’s children, of the family are the same vision of for America’s wives and mothers, for human sexuality and of marriage that society as a whole, then you might be was then adopted by those who were more hesitant to see judges enshrining pushing to legally redefine marriage. it into our Constitution because it Those ideas run all throughout Justice is that vision of sexuality that gave Kennedy’s majority opinion. When us the normalization of premarital you read Justice Kennedy’s opinion, sex. The rise of cohabitation, the it’s as if you were reading one of the increase in non-marital childbearing, liberal ideologues from the sixties, the introduction of no-fault divorce from the sexual revolution. The laws, the more than doubling in the phrase, “Love makes a family” is not rates of divorce. If you think those something that gay rights activists consequences aren’t good things, to came up with in the past decade as put it mildly, you might be skeptical the various state marriage battles about locking that vision into the were taking place. That is something Constitution. I want to share some that activists in the sixties gave us as lessons about what we should do now. part of the sexual revolution. The I want to suggest what we can do idea that marriage should last as to try to prevent some of the logical long as the love lasts—again that and psychological consequences of is not something that the LGBT the legal redefinition of marriage. movement gave us, that is something What can we do practically to make that heterosexuals gave us, who had a difference, to hopefully reform our bought into a bad understanding of marriage culture and our marriage the human person and of the human laws to strengthen families? What I family. Why this matters is that if you want to do is to draw lessons from the 2 | the wheatle\ institution Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage & Religious Freedom pro-life movement. of the young people will be in favor of It was around March 2015 that this new understanding of marriage I started writing a book titled Truth and the last “traditionalists” will be Overruled: The Future of Marriage and inside of the Vatican, maybe inside of Religious Freedom. Like most thinking Salt Lake City, and in nursing homes. people, I think we knew that Justice What can we do to prove those talking Kennedy was going to rule with the heads wrong? The future isn’t a blind four liberal Supreme Court Justices force, the future is something that we in redefining marriage in Obergefell v. are active participants in shaping. Hodges. I said, “Alright. If come June, As I was researching the book, we get the Roe v. Wade of marriage, I drew three large lessons from the what should we do in response?” In pro-life movement. The first lesson thinking through how to answer that from the pro-life movement is that question, I looked to, “What did the they rejected Roe v. Wade. They did pro-life movement do successfully not accept Roe v. Wade as the last word. after Roe v. Wade to make it easy to be a They said that Roe v. Wade tells a lie pro-lifer today in the United States?” both about the U.S. Constitution and Forty years ago when Roe v. Wade was a lie about unborn human life. They decided, all the talking heads said said that there is nothing in the actual that the Supreme Court has settled text or logic or structure of the U.S. the abortion issue, that a generation Constitution that guarantees a right from now, all of the young people will to an abortion. There isn’t anything be pro-choice, that the last pro-lifers properly understood that says— would be in nursing homes and inside in this case it was seven unelected of the Vatican. All of those talking judges—they could simply rewrite heads got it wrong. Your generation the abortion laws in all 50 states. The is more pro-life than your parent’s reason I say that is if we lost 5–4, generation. The reason is the work the pro-lifers lost 7–2. At least we that your parent’s generation did. have a closer ruling. We also got four Right now, all the talking heads are magnificent dissenting opinions. If saying that the Supreme Court has you noticed at Justice Scalia’s funeral settled the marriage debate. They are all the commentators were saying, saying that a generation from now, all “He was writing his dissents for you, the wheatle\ institution | 3 Ryan T. Anderson for students, for future law students, blizzards as they did this past year, and for generations of law students to they are there to bear witness to the come.” His dissent will still be read truth. They are there to bear witness in the Obergefell decision in a way that the court got this wrong, it is that Justice Kennedy’s will not. Law continuing to perpetuate an injustice professors find it embarrassing to try against the unborn Americans who are to teach and defend Justice Kennedy’s denied the law’s equal protection, and opinion. They say, “We agree with they are there to send a signal. Little the outcome, but the logic and the by little the pro-life movement has reasoning is embarrassing.” Scalia made progress in undoing that court and Roberts and Alito and Thomas, precedent, first with the Born-Alive all four of them wrote their own Infant Protection Act and then with dissenting opinions, pointing out banning partial-birth abortion, and various aspects of the flaws.