Insights from Experts

National Review Online published an article last week asking nine experts on their views on same-sex marriage. It’s interesting to read each person’s analysis on the future of marriage.

Here is an excerpt from one of the writers in the article, William C. Duncan, director of the Marriage Law Foundation:

Sunday’s media celebration of same-sex marriage in New York will surely miss the true significance of the change it heralds, a change that will extend far beyond the meaning it gives to new spouses. This is what makes same-sex marriage so unique in its impact on the institution. The decision to forego (through cohabitation) or end (through divorce) marriage undoubtedly has a broad social impact, especially when these individual decisions accumulate as they have in recent decades. But these kinds of decisions can be understood only as a departure from an ideal. Redefining marriage to modify its very nature is different. It involves the substitution of the ideal with an entirely different one. The new ideal, that marriage is the state’s way of endorsing adult relationship choices, will necessarily displace the old one, which had the potentially procreative relationship between men and women at its core. The widely ignored reality is that New York’s official policy will now be that children do not need a mother and father, because men and women are fungible. Will polygamy or open marriages be next? To some degree, that’s beside the point; the shift that will have already occurred is radical enough.

You can read the whole article here.