From the Heritage Foundation’s “The Foundry” blog today is a post titled “Marriage under Assault in Federal Courts: Why It Matters.” Writer Chuck Donovan summed up the “why” perfectly and linked to some of the evidence.
After reporting on two federal court assaults on the institution of marriage, Donovan writes:
The importance of marriage as a pre-political institution that confers immense benefits by wedding mothers and fathers in the cooperative task of raising children is demonstrated with increasing force every passing year. The health of families is central to the health-and wealth-of nations. No institution of civil society accomplishes more than the family unit, enduring over time and building bonds across generations, to undergird civil society.
At the same time, a vibrant civil society of core institutions-family, church, and voluntary associations-provides the surest bulwark against the relentless expansion of the state. If the last four decades teach us anything, it is that the growing separation of fathers, mothers, and children through out-of-wedlock childbearing and assaults on cultural norms invites massive state interventions in the name of alleviating poverty, crime, educational decline, and other ills.
These interventions, in turn, frequently undercut and accelerate the weakening of civil society and the freedoms it guarantees.
Marriage matters, therefore, because of its irreplaceable role in ‘nurturing children, providing them with mothers and fathers, and building and maintaining relationships’ among them. It ‘is a fundamental institution necessary for societal existence and well-being” that only the most arrogant of activist courts would presume to redefine for all Americans.’
I’d encourage readers to click on the two links Donovan includes in that first paragraph.
It’s not complicated. If you want civilization – you have to have civilizing institutions. The Heritage article by Chuck Donovan closes with this link:
