Recommended to kick off your new year: some arguments for heterosexual marriage which are not religiously based. After all, some like to say that all truth is God’s truth; therefore, there must be some non-religious way to explain why marriage has always been heterosexual. Enter the Witherspoon Institute’s Patrick Lee:

In a well-ordered society, the state should give legal recognition to real marriage, promote it, protect it, and privilege it over other sexual arrangements—as a good for the spouses and the children their union may form. The state has an essential interest in the health of marriage. Generally speaking, children will receive the best and most loving care if they are raised by their biological parents, who have formed a community aimed at providing the most suitable environment for any children they may help bring into being. Almost always, children can count on their mothers to care for them when they are young; the institution of marriage is dedicated to ensuring, as much as possible, that fathers also will fulfill their responsibilities to the children they help procreate, and to the mothers of their children. Furthermore, where the institution of marriage is strong, people’s sexual passions and energies—frequently difficult to control, often leading to self-centeredness and exploitation—are channeled toward intelligible goods, namely, marriage and family.

Unfortunately, that’s seen as a little too quaint in many quarters – particularly the quarter we live in. Read the rest here at Public Discourse.