Speaker says same-sex marriage debate centers on importance of marriage

By Melanie Ciarrone
Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2010

The institution of marriage, defined as the union of one man and one woman, plays an irreplaceable role in society, said Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy.
“We’re in a marriage crisis,” Gallagher said. “It has nothing to do with gay people; it has everything to do with how committed we are as a culture to strengthening marriage.”
Gallagher, an author and columnist who has written extensively on the subject of marriage, spoke at Franciscan University on April 6 to a full International Lounge. Her audience included students, professors and the Rev. Michael Scanlan, T.O.R.
The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy is a Virginia-based nonprofit research organization that promotes marriage as an important social institution.
Gallagher began by giving a brief description of her background, which included the birth of her oldest son when she was unmarried and a senior at Yale. She told the audience that she came back to the Catholic faith, which she had been baptized into and fallen away from, because of its teachings on sex and marriage.
“(The Church) was the only institution standing that I could see that retained and promoted these truths,” Gallagher said.
Gallagher said that no one suggested that she and her son’s father marry.
“The intensity of the concern was that we might make a bad marriage,” Gallagher said. “There was no concern at all about the idea that being an unwed mother was a problem.”
Through her job as an editor at the National Review, Gallagher began to see a lot of data that contrasted with her personal experience. Despite the results of scientific evidence she saw that said it was great to liberate women from the archaic institution of marriage. Gallagher believed children benefit from having a married mother and father.
“I compared all that (scientific) happy talk to what I could see (with) what I was given and what I was able to give my son,” she said.
Gallagher went on to talk about the founding of the National Organization for Marriage and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. She also discussed the implications of having same-sex marriage sanctioned by law, especially for religious organizations.
“It’s not that bad people are going to — out of cowardice — kowtow to the government, it’s that good people are going to face difficult choices about how strongly to speak up in their views of marriage in an environment in which … their whole enterprises are put at new legal risk,” she said.
Besides those concerns, however, Gallagher said she was also concerned about how same-sex marriage was going to affect traditional marriage. Her defense of marriage is based on a belief that children need a mother and father. She described an experience she had on a radio show in Maine when she said marriage between a man and a woman deserved a special status.
“I said, ‘These are the only kind of unions that can both make new life and connect those children in love to their mother and father.’ The radio host turned on a dime and said, ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing such bigotry,’” Gallagher said.
Part of the problem, she said, is that many Americans see the idea that traditional marriage is better for children as hateful. While she knew such problems were coming, Gallagher said she was surprised at how quickly they are progressing.
The stakes in the same-sex marriage debate are high, she said. Same-sex marriage advocates are raising the costs for those who speak in defense of marriage.
“The worst part is not that people are scared, because that’s a normal human reaction,” Gallagher said. “We have a movement now that is trying to persuade the next generation of Americans that the good itself is wrong, to make people ashamed of speaking up for the good, and there really is not corruption deeper than that.”
Gallagher concluded by saying that the gay marriage debate is only part of a larger battle to defend marriage. She said marriage advocates needed to focus on transmitting a marriage culture to the next generation.

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