Can marriage be altered to accommodate same-sex couples and also remain a robust institution for heterosexuals? The author answers this question with an emphatic “no.” The author describes marriage as an institution which effectively regulates procreation, and argues that altering marriage for same-sex couples will create loopholes which can be exploited by selfish heterosexual husbands and wives.

This article explores the differences in moral reasoning between what are referred to as the “Abrahamic faiths” (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), and those who support same-sex marriage. In exploring these differences, the author looks at the role of reason in comparison to emotion, the role of children, and the idea of freedom with respect to sexual unions. Finally, the author explores the consequences of adopting the moral reasoning of those who support same-sex marriage, and concludes that it could be detrimental to religious institutions. The author reiterates questions concerning the “legal severance of the tie between sexual love and new life…public ideals about marital fidelity…[and] the subordinate[ion] of the legal importance of biological ties.” The author also is particularly concerned about negative implications for family law, specifically the best interests of the child, adoption, custody, child support, and inheritance.

Culbertson argues that Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was wrongly decided. Instead of finding a fundamental right to marry, he insists the Court should instead "have renounced all governmental traditions that privilege civil marriage." It "presumes the legitimacy of illiberal and unequal sexual, religious,and other governance in order to condemn only the facial racial governance of antimiscegenation law." He believes--erroneously, it must be said--that "any of [marriage's] possible ends" are owed equally "to unmarried and unmarriable persons," and that consequently "the status afforded civil marriage is irrational and illegitimate."

Thomas Paprocki is an Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago and Adjunct Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and this article is taken from his remarks at a conference on the legal issues of same-sex relationships. Paprocki presents the Catholic viewpoint in opposition to same-sex marriage. He argues that the nature of marriage as a union of one man and one woman is rooted in human history, and that simply because the church supports this status quo, it does not imply a violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause. He also compares civil law with natural law, while making the claim for the uniqueness of procreation.

The author, legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, reads gains for gays regarding same-sex marriage as a threat to religious liberty. "Because of the undeniable centrality of marriage to civic and religious life, conflicts will inevitably arise where the legal definition of marriage differs dramatically from the religious definition." As his essay illustrates, however, the potential challenge to religious institutions does not concern governmental regulation of religious beliefs, but only areas of secular activity engaged in by religious institutions (e.g., employment, housing, and public accommodations). While no religion should be coerced into changing its private beliefs, neither is it obvious that any organization should be free to discriminate in the public sphere whatever its claimed motivation, especially when supported by governmental benefits such as tax exemptions. Severino offers no justification to support such a radical extension of religious protection.

In this controversial theme-issue (see Legal Blog Watch, http://tinyurl.com/8crosl), the editors offer a handful of conservative anti-gay law professors a platform from which to declaim the reasons why gay men and lesbians are not entitled to full civil rights, including the right to marry. Bradley P. Jacob first argues that Griswold v. Conn., 381 U.S. 479 (1965), which properly protected "the right of a husband and wife to the privacy of their sexual relationship within the marital bedroom," had it been properly understood, "need not have been the disaster for traditional marriage, family and sexuality that its progeny have become and are becoming." Gary A. Debele offers a reasonable analysis of the constitutional dimension of custody decisions which should elevate "the interests of the child and any long-standing caregivers who have or will love and nurture the child, while at the same time maintaining a healthy, although not absolute, respect for the interests and rights of the biological parent." William C. Duncan's contribution, titled "Does the Family Have a Future," is concerned not with families, but only with husband-wife nuclear units whose sole purpose is biological procreation. Steven W. Fitschen serves up reasons why a federal constitutional amendment is needed to prevent gays from winning the right to marry at the state level. Richard G. Wilkins and John Nielsen point to the outcome in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003), to ask "Does America still have a written Constitution?" Finally, Lynn D. Wardle analogizes gay marriage to the Holocaust.

Wardle and Oliphant present a variety of arguments against analogizing prohibitions of same-sex marriage with the prohibition on interracial marriage struck down in Loving v. Virginia, an analogy which they argue devalues Loving. Among the arguments articulated are those based upon court decisions refusing to extend the principle of Loving to same-sex marriage and the authors’ assertion that the African-American community is opposed to same-sex marriage.