In this video courtesy of TED.com, artist-mathematician-computer scientists Alexander Tsiaras provides a brief but visually stunning review of our origins:

The conflict is a result of two worldviews colliding. At many turns today we are experiencing the tension as these two opposing lifestyles butt heads. Homosexuals have become emboldened to bully everyone into accepting their lifestyle as legitimate. When people express concern over that lifestyle, the gay community demonstrates that they will not tolerate anyone who disagrees with their lifestyle choice.

Unfortunately, many people today have acquiesced into giving them the liberty they desire. However, in making the decision to accept homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle that must be defended, society must necessarily close the door to lifestyles choices that do not harmonize with it.

For example, Vanderbilt University has recently made a decision that all civic groups who use university property, must allow anyone who so desires to be a part of their leadership. This decision was the result of a gay man being denied a leadership role to a religious organization. The net effect of the decision is that the religious organization will most likely become a thing of past for the university.

In choosing to defend the gay lifestyle, the university will lose the rich heritage that comes from people of faith. But the university will lose not only their participation in campus life; they will also lose the religious liberty that has so successfully defined us as a people.

When our religious liberty gives way to a conflicting lifestyle choice, freedom itself is in jeopardy. The society that accepts a lifestyle at the expense of its own history, and at the expense of God’s revelation, is a society doomed to failure. Today we are at an important crossroads. The wrong choice will not simply mark out a new horizon for our country, but will prove to be the end of liberty as we know it.

We see an inverse relationship in the last 50 years, particularly in the West — as the institution of family weakens, the need for and intrusion of government – welfare and criminal – increases.

Robert George reminds us, “Liberty is valuable not so much for its own sake as for the sake of something larger, namely, human excellence or human flourishing. And … liberty is sustained—if it is sustained at all—by virtues that themselves must be transmitted by healthy institutions of civil society, beginning with the marriage-based family and communities of religious faith.”

Marriage is a civil right and a civil institution.  The State’s interest in it is and always has been promoting the creation and nurturing of the next generation. See here.  Jennifer Roback Morse explains in Privatizing Marriage Is Impossible:

Durham Debate
April 30, 2012

Marriage is a complex subject.  It is a legal term, a religious term, a civil institution, and a personal commitment.

The Marriage Amendment presently before voters addresses the legal and civil institution of marriage.  This is not a vote on private religious ceremonies, or about making homosexuality legal or illegal.

Civil institutions like marriage exist to serve a public purpose.  Civil institutions exist to influence behavior, to encourage or discourage human conduct.

Since its existence as a colony some 350 years ago, the institution of marriage in North Carolina has been the legal union of one man to one woman for the purpose of having a family.  Marriage provides an incentive and protection for a man and a woman to bond for the purpose of creating and raising the next generation in a secure environment.

The State’s interest in marriage is the generation of the next generation.  The reproduction and healthy upbringing of the next generation is the most fundamental of social functions.  It is that fundamental and foundation function which warrants government incentives and protection of marriage.

Since the 1960s, we’ve been redefining the purpose of sex, to be less about procreation and more about recreation.  Starting in the 1970s, we began redefining marriage to be less about the commitment to raising a family and more about adult liberty and satisfaction.

The results of this so-called sexual revolution and it’s cousin the no-fault divorce have not been good for families or for children.  Homosexual marriage takes society further down the road of redefining the most fundamental of institutions to be about the liberty interests of adults and not about one man and one woman raising a family.

The western liberal democracies have been engaged in redefining sex and marriage away from procreation since the 1960s.  The results have been catastrophic, with most of our liberal democracies suffering skyrocketing rates of single parenthood and collapsed fertility rates.  The data is unambiguous.  The West is committing demographic suicide.

Homosexual marriage is not the answer.  Same sex marriage converts marriage from being child centric to being adult centric. Marriage must be about encouraging men and women to create children and stick it out through good and bad to raise those children together as a father and mother team.

Children raised by their mother and father is the gold standard.  Regardless of how much two homosexuals might love each other, two men do not replicate a child’s mother.  Similarly, two women do not replicate a child’s father.  There is no public purpose served in incentivizing homosexual unions and the state should not incentivize homosexual parenting, nor should the state incentivize polygamous or polyamorous parenting or any other substitute for one man and one women raising their children.  Keep in mind that we’re talking about incentivizing behavior through a civil institution.  This is about government incentives, this is not about making relationships legal or illegal.

The homosexual lobby has conducted a public relations scare campaign to convince voters about the Marriage Amendment.  The homosexual lobby has tried the same tactics in dozens of prior campaigns across the United States.  In 30 out of 30 earlier votes, the voters knew better.  And in 30 out of those 30 prior amendments, no such harms have come to pass.  The arguments are legally frivolous and often outright false.

The homosexual lobby claims that the NC language is radical or somehow vague or mysterious.  These claims are utterly false.  Please read the Marriage Clauses in the Constitutions of Virginia and South Carolina.  Look at Idaho’s also.  It’s Amendment is six years old and nearly identical to NC’s.  Please also check Black’s Law dictionary, the Federal DOMA, and about a dozen other State’s already passed marriage amendments.  North Carolina’s amendment is very well written and would leave the decision of whether to redefine marriage in the hands of the citizens, and not radical lawyers, judges or politicians.

CLOSING REMARKS

Rob Agnelli recently said,

            Because marriage has such a profound effect on society as a whole, the state has a compelling interest in it. … Marriage as a social institution possesses certain qualities that offer an irreplaceable benefit to society. Through the lifelong commitment of the spouses, the most stable conditions for raising children are created.  Through sexual differences parents provide their children the full range of human love that comes by being raised by their mother and father.  Marriage binds parents and children together and thus serves the common good.  No other relationship involving parents and children can adequately substitute for these natural ones.

The more marriage ceases to be about the life long commitment of a man and a woman to raise a family, the less marriage produces life long commitment, and the less it produces family and children.

All citizens of North Carolina, gay and straight, are respected and welcomed and they have the right to private commitment ceremonies as they choose.  But, they do not have the right to redefine marriage for our State and demand that the state incentivize and promote homosexual unions through the institution of marriage.

Marriage is the foundation institution for creating, sustaining and raising the next generation.  The Marriage Amendment leaves it in the hands of North Carolinians, and not attorneys, to keep it that way.

Executive Summary

The economic well-being of the United States is strongly related to marriage, which is a choice about how we channel our sexuality. The implications of sexual choices are apparent when comparing family structures across basic economic measures such as employment, income, net worth, poverty, receipt of welfare, and child economic well-being. In all of these the stable, intact married family outperforms other sexual partnering structures; hence the economy rises with the former and encounters more difficulties and inefficiencies as it diverges from it.

Family Structures and Economic Outcomes:

• Employment and Income. Married-couple families generate the most income, on average. Young married men are more likely to be in the labor force, employed, and working a full-time job than their nonmarried counterparts. Cohabiting men have less stable employment histories than single and married men. Married families generally earn higher incomes than stepfamilies, cohabiting families, divorced families, separated families, and single-parent families. According to one study, married couples had a median household income twice that of divorced households and four times the household income of separated households.
• Net Worth. Intact, married families have the greatest net worth. A family’s net worth is the value of all its assets minus any liabilities it holds. Married households’ net worth is attributable to more than simply having two adults in the household: a longer-term economic outlook, thrift, and greater head-of-household earning ability (the marriage premium) all contribute to greater household net worth.
• Poverty and Welfare. Poverty rates are significantly higher among cohabiting families and single-parent families than among married families. Over one third of single mothers live in poverty. Nearly 60 percent of non-teenage single mothers rely on food stamps or cash welfare payments.
• Child Economic Mobility and Well-Being. Children in married, two-parent families enjoy more economic well-being than children in any other family structure. Children in cohabiting families enjoy less economic well-being than children in married families, but more than children in single-parent families. The children of married parents also enjoy relatively strong upward mobility. By contrast, divorce is correlated with downward mobility. A non-intact family background increases by over 50 percent a boy’s odds of ending up in the lowest socioeconomic level.

Married Families:

Married men enjoy an income increase called the “marriage premium.” Married families also tend to save more, have higher net worth, and enjoy greater net worth growth from year to year. Furthermore, the presence of both parents at home is strongly beneficial for children, giving both parents myriad more options in devising their income and parenting strategies, resulting in increased economic well-being.

Remarried Families:

Remarriage may improve women’s incomes after divorce, though men who remarry after divorce have, on average, less net worth than continuously-married men. Many remarried spouses choose to keep money in separate accounts rather than pooling all their resources. Poverty is reduced by 66 percent among children whose divorced mothers remarry.

Divorced Families:

The income decline that follows divorce, particularly among women, is well documented. Divorcing or separating mothers are 2.83 times more likely to be in poverty than those who remain married. Following a divorce, the parent with custody of the children experiences a 52 percent drop in his or her family income. The children of divorced mothers are less likely to earn incomes in the top third of the income distribution, regardless of where in the income distribution their parents’ income fell.

Single-Parent Families:

Single parents have a particularly difficult economic situation. Single mothers over age 20 more closely resemble teenage single mothers than they resemble married mothers their own age when their children are born. Single mothers have less net worth than married parents, single fathers, and stepfamilies; their net worth is comparable only to cohabiting couples. Over one third of single mothers live in poverty. Children in singleparent households have less family income and are more likely to be poor than children in married-parent households.

Cohabiting Families:

Cohabiting households generally have larger incomes than single-parent households but smaller incomes than married-parent households. Cohabiting women work more hours as their partner’s income increases because they deliberately avoid an agreement to totally pool their incomes. Cohabitors who live together for less than four years are not likely to pool their incomes. Older cohabitors who have never been married have, on average, 78 percent less net worth than those in intact families. Furthermore, cohabiters have the lowest net worth growth of all family structures, comparable to that of widows and widowers.

FULL REPORT HERE

“Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.”

Opponents claim that the proposed Amendment ultimately could deny domestic violence protections, child custody and visitation rights, and other legal benefits to thousands of unmarried couples in NC.  Their concerns are based on a legal analysis of the Amendment published by Maxine Eichner, a law professor at UNC School of Law and a leading academic on feminist and queer legal theory.

Campbell law professors Lynn Buzzard, William Woodruff, and Gregory Wallace have published a detailed reply to Eichner disputing the accuracy of her legal analysis and rejecting her stated concerns regarding how the Amendment might harm unmarried couples.  The Campbell professors’ purpose is to advance the public dialogue by addressing the flawed analysis of Eichner, whose misleading claims have provided the basis for the opposition’s ongoing scare campaign. The professors explain,

The reason for this paper is a narrow one. We do not endorse or oppose the proposed Amendment. There are thoughtful arguments on both sides, and we encourage a robust public debate about the Amendment. Our aim instead is to help clarify for North Carolina voters the Amendment’s legal meaning and likely effects. We believe that the Amendment debate has been distorted by concerns over certain legal consequences that are highly unlikely to occur. … We emphasize again that it is not up to us to tell anyone how to vote on the proposed Amendment. We offer this paper only as a modest attempt to explain the meaning and likely effects of the Amendment, should it pass. We believe that North Carolina voters are best served by having accurate legal information about the Amendment, so that they can properly consider the Amendment’s pros and cons and then vote their conscience.

The Campbell Law professors conclude that even if the Amendment passes, unmarried and same-sex couples still will be protected under domestic violence laws, would retain their current rights to child custody and visitation, and could continue to received public health insurance benefits.

The three professors state that because the Amendment applies to “legal unions” and not “relationships,” it bars only same-sex marriage and legal recognition of civil unions and domestic partnerships that resemble marriage unions.  The flaw in Eichner’s arguments is that she does not give the term “legal union” its proper legal effect in construing the Amendment. (Eichner admitted to me in debate that even without the “domestic legal union” clause, she still would not support a prohibition against same-sex marriage.)

The law professors’ full, detailed analysis can be found here:  The Meaning and Potential Legal Effects of North Carolina’s Proposed Marriage Amendment

Designed to break those that oversleep spin class  …

 ”You’re just not going anywhere …”