Children's Right to the Pursuit of Happiness Demand Legal Conjugal Marriage
Marriage predates recorded history. Most anthropologists believe it predates both religion and government. Jesus thought so too: “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” All agree that it is old — perhaps as old as mankind.
But what then is the government’s role in it?
Texas Republican Ron Paul deviates from conservative orthodoxy by claiming that the state should leave marriage to the churches and that no recognition of marriage by government is necessary. The Left calls for recognition of conjugal marriage and same-sex marriages.
Fortunately, in addressing such claims, the Declaration of Independence is the primary tool that Americans need to understand the role of government according to our founding principles.
The Declaration specifies that the government’s role is to secure such unalienable rights as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are to be secured in that order. For example, protecting one person’s pursuit of Happiness is never an excuse to strip someone else of Liberty (slavery). Liberty cannot be an excuse to strip some else of Life (abortion). Marriage concerns the pursuit of Happiness.
It is a self-evident truth that men and women are uniquely biologically, psychologically, and spiritually suited to the begetting and raising of stable children in marriage. The freshly released Sustainable Demographic Dividend (well worth reading) states:
“An abundant social-science literature, as well as common sense, supports the claim that children are more likely to flourish, and to become productive adults, when they are raised in stable, married-couple households. We know, for example, that children in the United States who are raised outside an intact, married home are two to three times more likely to suffer from social and psychological problems such as delinquency, depression, and dropping out of high school. They are also markedly less likely to attend college and be stably employed as young adults.”
Additional psychological research emphasizes the critical nature of the father’s and the mother’s relationship with children.
Furthermore, natural rights can be best understood as what would occur in a Lockean State of Nature. Locke had a Garden of Eden vision of the State of Nature. This is a sound reference point. Since grace perfects nature, analyzing what would occur in the state of nature must operate based on an appropriate perpetual state of grace scenario. The Garden of Eden fits the bill perfectly.
In the garden of Eden, an ongoing relationship with their biological mother and father would be a key to childhood happiness. This is a clear example of a right protected under the pursuit of Happiness.
Of course, a government protecting the right to the pursuit of Happiness for the child (a clear governmental responsibility) cannot violate Liberty in order to do so. However, marriage does not violate liberty whatsoever. It is a consensual agreement which the government recognizes and builds its law structure around.
Obviously, same-sex unions do not warrant such governmental recognition. No child will ever secure an ongoing relationship with his biological mother and father via a same-sex union. A government recognition of such unions as marriage would operate as a government stamp of approval for a particular exercise of Liberty. According to the Founding principles, that is simply not the role of government.
The state must continue to protect conjugal marriage from any form of assault by passing a Marriage Amendment to the US Constitution.
It is time to protect the child’s pursuit of Happiness once and for all.