Allan Carlson: Why Australia needs a renewed culture of natural marriage

At the Front Porch Republic, Allan Carlson reproduces his August 13th Address for the National Marriage Day Dinner at the York Conference Center in Sydney, Australia: “First and foremost, Australia needs a culture of natural marriage for the good of the children. Thousands of recent research projects in the fields of sociology, psychology, anthropology, and medicine all testify to one truth: children predictably do best when they are born into a married-couple home and raised by their two natural parents. This might be the most unassailable truth in all social science . . . The second reason Australia needs a renewed culture of natural marriage is because it is good for adults . . . The third reason that Australia needs a renewed culture of marriage is because it is good for the commonwealth, or the state . . . However, there is another ― and more profound ― reason for seeking to renew a culture of natural marriage. Briefly put, marriage ― as conventionally understood ― is a bulwark of liberty. Here ― despite the bigotry of Iowa judges against the past ― I revert to history. The telling reality is that every modern totalitarian movement ― every enemy of a free society ― has moved early and aggressively to disrupt or destroy the institution of natural marriage.”

Carlson also describes how his expert testimony in the Iowa marriage case Varnum v. Brien was received: “When the trial judge issued his bench ruling on the case the next year, he dismissed my testimony as irrelevant: he said that history ― the record of human triumphs and tragedies, follies and successes ― history had nothing to teach the law about the issue of ‘same sex’ marriage; only ‘number crunching’ sociology would be allowed as evidence. Partly for this reason, the judge in question found in favor of the plaintiffs. The Iowa Supreme Court subsequently upheld the judge’s ruling, and my home state ― not so long ago a bastion of rural conservatism ― became the fifth American state to embrace same-sex marriage.”