The logical case for same-sex marriage seems nearly ineluctable today. In the course of the past three decades, American state laws have effectively reduced marriage to a terminal sexual contract between consenting adults. Prenuptial and separation contracts allow parties to define their own rights and duties within the marital estate and thereafter. Unilateral no-fault divorce statutes have reduced marital dissolution to a formality. Lump sum marital property exchanges provide many divorcing parties with a clean break to marry anew. Criminal prosecutions for fornication, adultery, polygamy, and other classic sexual crimes have largely fallen aside. Free speech laws protect all manner of sexual expression, short of obscenity. Privacy laws protect all manner of sexual conduct, short of exploitation of children or abuse of others. Given such generous freedoms of marriage and sexual privacy, many states may feel hard pressed to resist the next logical step to legalize same-sex marriages.
ighty percent of the world's population is sick, 3,000 children die every two and one-half hours every day around the world, and the United States spends just $1 on children under 18 for every $12 spent on people over the age of 65, according to William H. Foege, Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Emory, and fellow and advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The problem with society is not that marriage is in trouble; the real crisis is that we expect marriage to compensate for the inequality created by and within our other institutions, according to Martha A. Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law, and a renowned expert in family law and feminist theory.
CSLR Senior Fellow Johan D. van der Vyver is traveling to countries in the midst of constitutional and church-state strife ¿ Nepal, India, Chile, and China -- to advise them on solutions tried by other nations. It¿s a role he¿s been playing since he helped bring an end to apartheid in his native South Africa nearly two decades ago.