Gay marriage and reshaping society

SALT LAKE CITY — When Maggie Gallagher first got involved in marriage issues it had nothing to do with gay marriage advocates or redefining marriage. She was on the road to recreate what she calls a "marriage culture" in America where more children have stable homes with loving mothers and fathers. But before long, she was drawn into the debate over gay marriage.

"I avoided the discussion of gay marriage as long as I possibly could," Gallagher told the Sutherland Institute's "One Hundred Club" annual dinner last night at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City. Before she got involved in the issue, she thought same-sex marriage was an "us/them" problem while the larger problems marriage was facing in society was a "we" problem and more important.

"The capacity of our nation to sustain a reasonably well-functioning marriage culture is the key problem in our time," said Gallagher, who is the founder and chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage. She said where marriage is weakened children suffer and there are higher rates of social ills like crime and education failure. She also pointed to Europe and what she called "the sudden collapse of the willingness to have enough children to replace the current generation."

Gallagher spoke about how marriage is an almost universal social institution throughout diverse cultures and time. Why is that? She said there were three reasons for its universality:

1. "The overwhelming majority of us are powerfully attracted to an act that creates human life. Newsflash: Relationships between men and women create babies."

2. "Society needs babies. … Only societies that have learned how to successfully manage the procreative implications of male/female attraction have survived."

3. "Children ought to have a father as well as a mother. … When a baby is born there is bound to be a mother somewhere close by. If we want fathers to be there for their children and the mothers of their children, biology alone won't do it. We need a cultural mechanism to attach fathers to the mother/child bond."

When events in Massachusetts looked like they would make same-sex marriage a reality there, Gallagher said she saw the implications to her dream of strengthening a marriage culture in the United States. She said marriage would change and no longer be about bringing together mothers and fathers for children.

So she quit her job and started a think tank and eventually the National Organization for Marriage.