What is marriage?

This short and to-the-point video is for Australia, but it perfectly explains why the government has an interest in regulating marriage in any country, including the US.

Whenever a marriage amendment passes in one state or another, I can’t tell you how many times I hear someone lament, “why would anyone deny two people the right to affirm their love?” This is not about love, people! No one is being denied the right to love whomever they choose.

Marriage, in both the religious and secular sense, is not merely about affirming the love between two people, as far too many people (hetero and homosexual, alike) think. It is our most foundational institution for raising children and building families (and, as a result, building society). It is a gift and a great responsibility, not a right.

In many ways, it’s actually heterosexuals who are making the defense of the traditional, natural marriage and family structure so difficult. While divorce rates are not nearly as high as most people like to claim, fewer people are getting married in general, with a good many of the adults who are in (semi) serious relationships opting for cohabitation instead of marriage (I swear, I’ll scream the next time I hear, “we don’t need a piece of paper to make our love legitimate”) and over forty percent of the children born in the US today are born to single mothers. It’s kind of hard to argue the importance of marriage as it has always been understood when this is the accepted (and often celebrated) new normal. Ah, but, for the sake of future generations, we must press on.

Recommended: How to Make the Case for Marriage (without using religious lingo). When we’re talking about marriage laws, the argument is not about why the church doesn’t approve of same-sex marriage, but why the state should have a problem with it. And we need to be able to answer that question.