Get Equipped: What Is Marriage?

The Heritage Foundation just hosted a helpful discussion on what marriage is featuring Robby George, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan Anderson. The discussion draws off a book, What Is Marriage?, just published by these three thinkers. If you want to be equipped on a strong, accessible public square argument for marriage based in sharp thinking and reason, this is a great place to go.

George is always terrific; I also found Ryan Anderson’s comments filled with wit and easy to understand. Here’s the event description:

Until recently, no society had questioned whether marriage would be anything other than a male-female union. What Is Marriage? identifies and defends the reasons for this historic consensus and shows why redefining civil marriage is unnecessary, unreasonable, and contrary to the common good. What Is Marriage? answers common objections: that the historic view of marriage is rooted in bigotry; that it is callous to people’s needs; or that it can’t show the harm of recognizing same-sex couplings.

Originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the book’s core argument quickly became the year’s most widely read essay on the most prominent scholarly network in the social sciences. Since then, it has been cited and debated by scholars and activists throughout the world as the most formidable defense of the tradition ever written. Join us as authors Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George discuss about what marriage is, why it matters, and how to talk about it.

Watch the video here. Here’s some helpful material on the subject over at First Things from Robby George, too.