SAME-SEX MISHEGOSS: I have more posts at MarriageDebate.com, and Jonathan Rauch (with whom I had an entirely pleasant prior interaction working on the “Christianity from the Outside” symposium for Crisis) replies to my previous posts.

Gene Vilensky also replies to a swathe of my second MD.com post. I wrote, “Marriage is a political (legal) issue, not solely a cultural issue, precisely because when a man and a woman have sex they often produce a child, and that child needs to be protected. The political structure of civil marriage arose around that fact and in response to that fact. Marriage is not a political issue because the state has a compelling interest in making sure that its citizens have fulfilling relationships, or feel that their romantic choices are honored–how is that the state’s business? It’s a political issue because of all the, you know, kids.”

Gene responds here.

I have two quick replies: First, marriage as a political institution far predates the Christian states Gene’s discussing. As Maggie Gallagher has frequently pointed out, even societies that accepted or in some cases even praised homosexual activity did not develop same-sex marriage.

Second, though, I think you can remove the historical claim (which I do stand by, but it’s not necessary for the point I’m trying to make), and rephrase my sentence as, “In a secular society, marriage is a political (legal) issue, not solely a cultural issue, precisely because when a man and a woman have sex they often produce a child, and that child needs to be protected,” etc.

Gene also objects to various aspects of Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite’s book The Case for Marriage. I will first just say that he should read the book! If he does, he will find that it specifically does not argue that “two parents who are always fighting a la Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in War of the Roses are better off staying together and scarring the kids rather than getting a divorce.” Reading the book would both focus his critique and answer some of his preliminary objections, I think.

But I will also point him, and others interested in issues of self-selection in marriage studies, to a post I did on the subject. It certainly doesn’t answer all possible questions about self-selection. But it does highlight some of the ways in which social science requires a robust foundation of philosophy in order to know, for example, which factors are relevant, how persuasive alternate explanations of the data are, and–in this case–how to understand selection effects.