I love the television show Heroes on NBC. My wife and I got addicted to the program via Netflix and have made it appointment viewing ever since. Lately, the show, which began with straightforward characters and easily understandable models of nobility, has become more complicated.Noah, a . . . . Continue Reading »
A few years ago, I attended a family wedding and watched an amazing sight. The groom’s grandmother was suffering from advanced Parkinson’s and was confined to a wheelchair. She was utterly dependent on her husband. As a part of the ceremony, the minister invited the congregation to come . . . . Continue Reading »
Everyone agrees that marriage, whatever else it is or does, is a relationship in which persons are united. But what are persons? And how is it possible for two or more of them to unite? The view typically (if often unconsciously) held by advocates of liberal positions on issues of sexuality and . . . . Continue Reading »
The obligations and purposes of law and government are to protect public health, safety, and morals, and to advance the general welfare—including, preeminently, protecting people’s fundamental rights and basic liberties. At first blush, this classic formulation (or combination of classic . . . . Continue Reading »
Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age by kay s. hymowitz ivan r. dee, 192 pages, $22.50 The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families,” wrote John Adams in 1778. Adams recognized, as did many of the founders, that the . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m a fan of old movies, the black-and-whites from the 1930s and 1940s, in part because of what they reveal about how American culture has changed. The adults in these films carry themselves differently. They don’t walk and speak the way we do. It’s often hard to figure out how old the . . . . Continue Reading »
Within the next two or three years, the Supreme Court will almost certainly climax a series of state court rulings by creating a national constitutional right to homosexual marriage. The Court’s ongoing campaign to normalize homosexuality—creating for homosexuals constitutional rights to . . . . Continue Reading »
In 2003, the chief appellate court of the province of Ontario unanimously ruled that the common law definition of marriage in force in Canada (“one man and one woman”) was unconstitutional, as it violated the equality guarantees of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (an amendment to the . . . . Continue Reading »
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred on unmarried couples or groups. . . . . Continue Reading »
Recently I witnessed a spectacle unlike anything I have seen in twenty years: a mass wedding celebrated by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. On April 27, 2002, in the ballroom of a large hotel on the fringe of America’s capital, I watched as Moon formalized the wedding vows of—or so he . . . . Continue Reading »
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