Share the good news of marriage with your friends by forwarding this newsletter to them!

July 28-31, 2011 in Point Loma, CA. For 18-30 year-olds. (Not in that age range? Tell your friends who are!) The Ruth Institute pays all expenses for accepted applicants! Apply here!

Talking Point: "We often hear the objection that some marriages don’t have children. This is perfectly true. However, every child has parents. Depriving a child of relationships with his or her parents is an injustice to the child, and should not be done without some compelling or unavoidable reason." ~From Dr. J's testimony

Action Item: Want all of Dr. J's Talking Points for defending traditional marriage? You can get them all in one handy pamphlet, easy to pull out of pocket or purse when needed. Get 77 Non-Religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage for your church or parish here, or purchase a single copy for yourself by sending $1 and a self-addressed stamped envelope to: 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Rd., Suite 222, San Marcos, CA 92078

Marriage without Adjectives at Texas A&M University Dr. J gave this talk at Texas A&M on "Marriage without Adjectives." She explains her work with the Ruth Institute, her experience as a campaign spokesman for Prop 8, some of the reasons to defend marriage, and what will happen if marriage is dismantled. (Click the POD icon.)

Lutheran Public Radio: Dr. J is usually on live on Tuesdays from 2-2:15 p.m. Pacific Time (Click the link to listen live or find a station near you.)

May 9--Hosting 1000 AM, KCEO in San Diego 6-7 p.m. Pacific with Bill Duncan, discussing ITAF 2011. Bill Duncan is the director of the Marriage Law Foundation and is a seasoned ITAF speaker.

May 14--Petaluma, CA, Calvary Chapel Petaluma. "Do You Know Where You Stand on Life, Marriage, Religious Freedom?" Sponsored by Christian Worldview Conference.

May 15 and 18--"Promoting Marriage on Campus," an interview with Dr. J being aired on EWTN's show, “Faith & Culture.” Click here for air times and viewing information.

May 27--Dr. J to speak in Hong Kong (closed event)

June 3--Commencement speaker, Providence Academy High School, Minneapolis, MN (closed event)

June--Phoeniz, AZ. Alliance Defense Fund, Blackstone Legal Fellowship speaker (closed event)

June 14-17--Grand Rapids, MI Acton University speaker

July 28-31--Point Loma, CA. "It Takes a Family" Conference 2011.

Miss an issue of the newsletter? Check out the archives here.

Do you need advice on how to improve your marriage or relationship, or on how to find the right person for you? Expert Dr. J is here for you. Click here to ask your question, which may be featured anonymously in this newsletter for the benefit of all.

Read past questions and answers here.

Need help with your marriage? You can also check out Dr. J's "101 Tips for a Happier Marriage!"

• To prevent mailbox filters from deleting mailings from The Ruth Institute, add jmorse@ruthinstitute.org to your address book

Welcome new subscribers from Stanford and UC Davis!

Reel Love Challenge: Honorable Mention

Rachel and I were married in July of 2011 after four years of dating and engagement. We met while undergraduates at Vanderbilt University. While neither of us are filmmakers, we enjoy creative engagement of the arts to advocate for social justice. We heard about the Ruth Institute through Rachel's mother, and decided to give the competition a go.

Believing that God is sovereign over our lives, our marriage represents God's prophecy before we were even born. Of course, that commitment isn't easy, but the challenge is what makes it worthwhile! Rachel and I believe that since God brought us together, He alone can hold us together. We pray that our love and respect for one another retains a quality that testifies to the beautiful possibility of lifelong commitment.

~John Nehme

Dr. J's testimony to the MN Senate Judiciary regarding Same S*x Marriage

Delivered April 29, 2011, in St. Paul, Minnesota

We are here to consider giving the citizens of the State of Minnesota the opportunity to vote on a marriage amendment to their Constitution. The proposed amendment simply states “Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota.”

I am Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage. My doctorate is in economics, from the University of Rochester, in NY. I have taught at Yale and George Mason Universities. I have had fellowships with the University of Chicago, Cornell Law School, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford. I have written two books on the social purpose and significance of marriage. I am the mother of an adopted child and a birth child. My husband and I were foster parents in San Diego County for three years.

I urge you to allow the citizens of MN the opportunity to exercise their right to vote on the definition of marriage. Removing the requirement that spouses be of opposite sex is a redefinition of marriage. Redefining marriage redefines parenthood. Redefining marriage affects the balance of power between the state and civil society. The citizens of MN have the right to make up their own minds about these important issues.

The proposed amendment is nothing radical. The people of MN are entitled to say whether they want marriage to remain as the union of one man and one woman, or whether they want to take their chances with marriage being redefined by activist judges. Letting the citizens vote is just the decent thing to do.

The essential public purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. We can see the importance of this purpose by taking the perspective of the child: What is owed to the child? Unlike adults, the child does not need autonomy or independence. The child is entitled to a relationship with and care from both of the people who brought him into being. Therefore, the child has a legitimate interest in the stability of his parents’ union. But no child can defend these entitlements himself. Nor is it adequate to make restitution after these rights have been violated. The child’s rights to care and relationship must be supported pro-actively, before harm is done, for those rights to be protected at all.

Marriage is adult society’s institutional structure for protecting the legitimate interests of children. Without this public purpose, we would not need marriage as a distinct social institution.

We often hear the objection that some marriages don’t have children. This is perfectly true. However, every child has parents. Depriving a child of relationships with his or her parents is an injustice to the child, and should not be done without some compelling or unavoidable reason. The objection that some marriages don’t have children stands the rationale for marriage on its head. It views marriage strictly from the adult’s perspective, instead of from the child’s perspective.

Marriage is not simply a special case of the market, and family law is not simply a subset of property and contract law. Marriage exists to meet the social necessity of caring for helpless children, who are not and cannot be, contracting parties. Children are protected parties. And, marriage should protect the interests of both parents in pursuing their common project of rearing their children. If we replace this essential public purpose with inessential private purposes, marriage will not be able to do its job. But children will still need secure attachments to their mothers and fathers, a need which will go unfulfilled.

Same sex marriage redefines parenthood, as a side effect of redefining marriage. Up until now, marriage has made legal parenthood track biological parenthood, with adoption for exceptional situations. The legal presumption of paternity means that children born to a married woman are presumed to be the children of her husband. With this legal rule, and the social practice of sexual exclusivity, marriage attaches children to their biological parents.

Same sex couples of course, do not procreate together. So called Marriage Equality requires a dubious move from “presumption of paternity” to the gender neutral “presumption of parentage.” This sleight of hand transforms the legal understanding of parenthood. The same sex partner of a biological parent is never the other biological parent. Rather than attaching children to their biological parents, same sex marriage is the vehicle that separates children from a parent.

No longer will the law hold that children need a mother and a father. In the wake of marriage redefinition in other states, courts are saying silly things like, “the traditional notion that children need a mother and a father to be raised into healthy, well-adjusted adults is based more on stereotype than anything else.”[1]

This statement made by the Iowa Supreme Court in Varnum v Brien, is false as a general statement. Mountains of data show that children do need their mothers and their fathers,[2] and that children care deeply about biological connections.[3]

Please don’t change the subject by saying that we already have lots of children unattached to their parents. We should be taking steps to place responsible limits on things like divorce, rather than careening headlong into further and more deeply entrenched institutionalized injustices to children.

Equating same sex parenting with opposite sex parenting will also marginalize men from the family. By legalizing same sex unions, the authority of the government declares that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. Society asserts that children do equally well with two mommies, two daddies or one of each. And when mothers and fathers are interchangeable, it is fathers who will be pushed aside.

In Canada, where same sex unions have been legal since 2005, the birth certificates reflect this marginalization of fathers. Each birth certificate in British Columbia has a place to mention the biological mother. The second parent is listed as “father or co-parent,” and people check off whether the “other parent” is the father or co-parent. Fatherhood is officially reduced to a check-off box.

Keep reading.

Comment on this article

Support Ruth