Author Archive | Maggie Gallagher

Well, bad time management on my part. No time to introduce you to the joys of theories of the cognitive nature of social institutions, the relevance of the New Institutionalist Economics understanding of isomorphic institutional change, the developing legal pressures in Canada to repress opposition to its new normative understanding of marriage, or even why […]

Ok, very brief rebuttals, since you insist. On adoption: I think adoption is great. I even think single parents adopting is great (if the alternative is no family).. I think arguably adoption is morally better than procreation. (The Christian view is we are all children of God through adoption). But before you can adopt you […]

A reader asks, “How about a frank admission that many people are opposed to gay marriage simply because they despise homosexuals, or have a strong religious feeling that homosexuality is wrong, wrong, wrong.” Yes this is true. In addition to the marriage debate about SSM, there is an overlapping and parallel moral debate over how […]

Orin, I also want to respond to your first very perceptive question: “ If marriage is so innate, why should we expect a small number of same-sex marriages to have a significant effect on how the majority in opposite sex relationships behave?” I don’t think marriage is a universal human institution because marriage is innate. […]

Let me interrupt this marriage debate for a shameless book plug. Seamus Hasson’s new book is called The Right to Be Wrong and it has gotten rave reviews from Michael Novak (not only “rollicking” but “wholly original”), also Mary Ann Glendon. I’ve read it. It’s a fascinating, quirky book that combines an intellectual history of […]

Orin, I woke up at 4 a.m. thinking about your question, and wrote the post below. I see you’ve posted again. Thanks and yes you are basically getting the argument. This may make it more clear: Orin, thanks for your question, it’s a good one: why do I think a small number of gay people […]

I should say that I always assume good will and I know most people who support gay marriage do not want to hurt marriage. But it is also true that some of the architects and advocates of gay marriage are interested in precisely that: overthrowing what they see as an archaic institution. Judith Stacey, for […]

Let me clarify: this is not a question of motive. It’s a question of the internal logic of the position being promoted. The main motive here is to elevate the status of gay people and their relations to the same social and legal plane as opposite-sex married ones. But let’s play with that logic and […]

So what worries me about SSM? The big picture: we are in the middle of a huge and only partly acknowledged crisis around marriage and family. Every single society that that we think of as, in other ways, the very best for human flourishing (stable, democratic, market economies with respect for political and creative freedom) […]

I decided some people needed to see this, before I could go on: 1. Does society need babies? The U.S. is the only Western democracy anywhere near fertility replacement levels. (We’re just under 2.1, after dipping as low as 1.7 babies per woman in the late 70s) The norm for the developed world is becoming […]

Just a bit more, Todd: Given how powerfully pro-technology we Americans are (yes, me too), I think it’s worth pointing out out that in the vast majority of cases described as instances of “reproductive technology”, what we are talking about is the technology of the turkey baster. People have known for hundreds of years how […]

In terms of its relation to marriage you can do one of two things with reproductive technology. You could say, only married people can use it, on the grounds that you should not be affirmatively at law encouraging people to have babies out of wedlock. Or you could instead analogize to unwed childbearing and say, […]

Todd, thanks for the question! I don’t think reproductive technologies change the legal principles surrounding marriage, much, with one big exception, which I’ll get to. Marriage is a universal human institution because every society needs to regulate the procreative consequences of male-female sexual attraction. (Marriage regulates people who aren’t married by the way, e.g. by […]

The same-sex marriage debate is really three debates: a legal debate, a social policy debate and a moral debate. Of course people’s views on these things are intertwined, but intellectually the failure to separate these three related but distinct inquiries is one reason that exchanges of views on this topic are so often circular and […]

There’s a petition circulating in Massachusetts to define marriage as the union of husband and wife in the state constitution. In a bid to discourage anyone from signing the petition, a couple of activists have posted the petition names on the internet. A friend pointed out to me the following post from Livejournal.com: http://www.livejournal.com/users/mmeubiquitous/119651.html?thread=253795#t253795 “You […]