---

On November 6 you will be asked to vote on the proposed constitutional amendment regarding marriage which reads, "Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?"

So why is our Minnesota government concerned with marriage to begin with? The primary business of the state of Minnesota is justice. The essential "public purpose" of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another, as opposed to "private purposes" people might have for getting married (such as love, freedom to marry whoever you wish, etc). Because children are not autonomous and able to defend their entitlements, adult society has an obligation in justice to provide institutional structures that protect children's most basic interests. Depriving children of a relationship with their parents without some unavoidable or compelling reason is an injustice. Marriage is that institutional structure that protects children's identity and relational rights. Without this public purpose we wouldn't need marriage as a distinct social institution.

Same sex couples and opposite sex couples are obviously different with respect to this essential public purpose of marriage. Attempting to create one legal institution that treats same sex couples identically with opposite sex couples is inconsistent with the state's purpose for involvement in marriage law. Same-sex marriage separates the unitive aspects of marriage from the procreative aspects, rendering marriage as gender neutral, a "private" intimate association, with conception and child rearing responsibilities incidental.

While there are goods other than procreation that marriage celebrates and protects, dismissing the relationship between kin altruism and marriage is the ultimate injustice to children. Considering the child's point of view-their needs and rights are to be raised in a society whose legal, religious, and cultural institutions intentionally promote, and do nothing to compromise the principle that children should be raised, as nearly as possible, by the parents who conceive them. To disregard the needs of children and brush aside a large body of social science data that demonstrates the benefits of children being raised by their biological married parents, dismisses human flourishing and offends social justice. Family structure matters for the common good of society.

Marriage and its definition should be in the hands of civil society and government should support, doing nothing to undercut, initiatives rising from society. Law and government must regulate marriage, but they do not create the meaning of marriage anymore than they create the meaning of education or business. The proposed constitutional amendment will not change the definition of marriage in this state. It will not take away anyone's rights, as government is not interested in who you love or who you marry. They are interested in the perpetuation and stabilization of society through attaching mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Voting YES on the Marriage Protection Amendment will preserve the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It will require those who want to change the definition of marriage to persuade the voters of Minnesota, instead of a handful of judges and politicians. Vote YES November 6th. For more information go to http://www.minnesotaformarriage.com/[[In-content Ad]]

---