What is Marriage? Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It

The Heritage Foundation has published an excellent report on marriage, asking what it is and why it matters, and then explaining the consequences of redefining it. Now, before you get all bent of of shape by the Heritage Foundation's conservative credentials, make sure you read it. It makes an outstanding argument backed by facts from across the political spectrum and without using religion.

Here are the key points

1. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces.
2. Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need both a mother and a father.
3. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. Marital breakdown weakens civil society and limited government.
4. Government recognizes marriage because it benefits society in a way that no other relationship does.
5. Government can treat people equally and respect their liberty without redefining marriage.
6. Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers; weaken monogamy, exclusivity, and permanency, the norms through which marriage benefits society; and threaten religious liberty.

Check out the full report.