(1) Who has the power to make such far-reaching changes to human society, a few judges sitting around a table or the people whose lives are actually regulated by the change?

(2) Once we establish that the people have the right to decide whether or not to make this change, we need to be able to persuade people to our way of thinking. For those of us who take our religion seriously, we are in fact susceptible to being persuaded that changing the law in this way would actually promote homosexual conduct as well as undermine our common understanding of what marriages and families are as a social institution that forms the foundation for our society and culture. If we fail to make this argument in terms of what our religious authorities teach, there are many people in our churches and synagogues who will say, “Why should I care what those people do in their own homes?” And it is perfectly legitimate to speak to people in the context of a shared denomination about the reasons those who share that common faith and principles have for supporting the traditional meaning of marriage and family. That may not persuade people who do not share our often complex understanding of the world and its purpose and our roles in it and what God wants us to be doing, but it is perfectly legitimate for us to speak to those in our own groups in that fashion.

(3) Then there are arguments about the specific question of whether or not to normalize gay marriage, arguments that have to share common ground with people who don’t share our religious beliefs. The argument I myself have offered to those people is this: I work in the laws and regulations that ensure protection of our natural environment. When a proposal is made that will have a major effect on the human environment, such as cutting down a forest or exploring for oil in the oceans or in a wildlife refuge, we insist that there be a full and complete study of the impacts the project will have on both our own health and the health of the animals and plants we share this earth with. We also insist that government err on the side of conserving the ecosystems that exist, that we know work and sustain life. We don’t want to experiment with the world we live in by spreading chemicals or exotic species of plants or insects with unknown side effects into our air and soil and water.

To change the meaning of what it means to be married is precisely an experiment with the social ecology of humanity. How can we plunge into it, experimenting with the lives of literally millions of adults and children, without full prior consideration of the potential consequences? If you believe in the evolution of biological communities, and of social communities, then you believe that social and behavioral aspects of human life evolved because they were advantageous for our survival and health as a species. They have tremendous value measured in how difficult it has been to develop them. Just as we don’t want to role the dice when what we risk is our health or the survival of our natural ecosystems, we should not roll the dice when it comes to the foundation of human life, our families, and the most important relationship that creates families, namely marriage between men and women. Men and women must have an incentive to invest their lives in the two decades it takes to create and raise educated and civilized children, so our civilization can survive and thrive. Our mental and emotional health depends on these fundamental relationships. Forcing a change in what these relationships mean will have unknown consequences for all of us. If we don’t want to experiment with our air and water and living species, why are we so ambitious to experiment with the human species?