Battle over marriage is over definition not equality.

Professor Robert George and his coauthors of "The Meaning of Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense" discussed their book at the Heritage Foundation.  You can view a video of the presentation here.

What is marriage?

The reason a lot of conservatives find it difficult to talk about the issue of gay marriage, said Girgis, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University and J.D. candidate at Yale Law School, is that "they've accepted the main framing culture has given us – it's about expanding the pool of people able to marry. That's not what this debate is about. ... It's about what marriage is."

There are two separate views of marriage described in the book. The revisionist view, they argue, sees marriage as based upon an emotional union tied to romance. The authors favor what they call the "conjugal view" of marriage, which they define as: "a comprehensive union: a union of will (by consent) and body (by sexual union); inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment, whatever the spouses' preferences."

Laws should define marriage according to the conjugal view, they argue, because of the many public goods that benefit society when such a view is upheld and promoted. Law shapes beliefs, beliefs shape behavior, and human well-being and interests are affected by beliefs and behavior, they contend.

Consequences of redefining marriage?

Redefining marriage, the authors claim, will bring harm to the many public goods provided by marriage. Among these public goods described in the book, the authors discussed the well-being of children, limited government and religious liberty in the seminar.

A wealth of social science studies support the view that marriage structure matters to the well-being of children, contended Anderson, the William E. Simon fellow in religion and a free society at The Heritage Foundation, and kids do best when raised by a biological mother and father.

Paraphrasing sociologist David Popenoe, Anderson said, "We should get rid of the idea that mommies can be good daddies and daddies can be good mommies.

Why it's important?

The conjugal definition of marriage is also necessary for limited government, Anderson argued, because when marriage fails the welfare state necessarily increases to aid the broken lives that result. Citing a study by Brookings Institution, a left-of-center think tank, Anderson noted that between 1970 and 1996, $229 billion in federal welfare expenditures is attributable to the breakdown of marriage. Plus, a 2008 study showed that divorce and unwed parenting cost taxpayers $112 billion per year in state and federal social safety net programs.

Echoing that theme, George, McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, said that conservative ideals – "limited government, economic growth, rule of law, and the preservation of democratic self-government" – cannot be maintained "while letting the institution of the family erode and collapse."

"Everything depends on marriage," George said, "because it is the fundamental unit of society, the original and best department of health, education and welfare, supplying what every other institution in society needs, depends on, for its own flourishing, but which none of those institutions can supply for themselves."

Rent a womb and exploit a woman.

An issue which has arisen in the Minnesota legislature in the past is the issue of gestational surrogacy, e.g. individual(s) contract with a woman to become impregnated with a fertilized egg and then turns the child over to these persons after the birth.  Because this usually happens with the exchange of money, I view the practice as, in effect, baby selling.

A major "market" for this practice is in developing countries, because the big money paid to these women is very appealing.

One observer describes it as "biological colonialism".  I've also heard it described by a former surrogate carrier as "reproductive prostitution".

It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire. The Brits colonized vast areas of the earth, civilizing exotic places  with the likes of afternoon tea and cricket. Oh, and happily using up natural resources along the way.

Those days are gone, but we’ve entered a new era of colonialism: renting the wombs of women in exotic places to fulfill a desire to have a child, under any circumstances. And now the natural resources are the wombs of destitute women.

Wesley J. Smith in National Review Online calls this “biological colonialism“, and cites a story from The Independent. This renting of wombs seems centered in India, where regulations are minimal, and the law allows not only married couples to rent a womb, but gays and lesbians as well. Smith notes this story:

Stephen Hill and his partner Johnathon Busher first held their twin girls in their arms less than 12 hours after their birth in a Delhi hospital last April.The gay couple, from the West Midlands, had been together for 18 years when they decided they wanted a family.

In 2011, they travelled to India and agreed a contract with a clinic in Delhi where Mr Hill’s sperm was used to fertilise an egg from a donor they had selected, and the resulting embryo was implanted in a surrogate mother. When the twins were born there was an “awkward moment” before the surrogate mother agreed to hand them over, as her husband had been telling medical staff the infants were his own. “She was reminded that it was a deal and she was fine. She was a little bit too attached and she needed to be reminded,” Mr Busher said. “We produced the contract and we were able to take them out of the hospital. We were so happy our feet didn’t touch the ground.”

It is hard to know where to begin with the horror of this “transaction”. The mother was a “bit too attached”? “We produced the contract”? Then there is the underlying notion that someone who wants a baby should simply have one – “I want it, I deserve it, I’m going to buy one” – as if it’s the latest tech toy or car.

200 years ago we were buying and selling people and calling it slavery. Now we’re calling it parenthood.

University of Minnesota and lack of public fiscal accountability.

Here's an interesting piece from the Wall Street Journal on the lack of fiscal accountability at the University of Minnesota.

When Eric Kaler became president of the University of Minnesota last year, he pledged to curb soaring tuition by cutting administrative overhead. But he hit a snag: No one could tell him exactly what it cost to manage the school.

Like many public colleges, the University of Minnesota went on a spending spree over the past decade, paid for by a steady stream of state money and rising tuition. Officials didn't keep close tabs on their payroll as it swelled beyond 19,000 employees, nearly one for every 3½ students. "The more questions I asked, the less happy I was," Dr. Kaler said.

Many of the newly hired, it turns out, were doing little teaching. A Wall Street Journal analysis of University of Minnesota salary and employment records from 2001 through last spring shows that the system added more than 1,000 administrators over that period. Their ranks grew 37%, more than twice as fast as the teaching corps and nearly twice as fast as the student body.

Across U.S. higher education, nonclassroom costs have ballooned, administrative payrolls being a prime example. The number of employees hired by colleges and universities to manage or administer people, programs and regulations increased 50% faster than the number of instructors between 2001 and 2011, the U.S. Department of Education says. It's part of the reason that tuition, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has risen even faster than health-care costs.

...Administrative employees make up an increasing share of the university's higher-paid people. The school employs 353 people earning more than $200,000 a year. That is up 57% from the inflation-adjusted pay equivalent in 2001. Among this $200,000-plus group, 81 today have administrative titles, versus 39 in 2001.

Administrators making over $300,000 in inflation-adjusted terms rose to 17 from seven.

...For decades, public universities were somewhat insulated from financial rigor by steadily increasing state funding. That has slowed or stopped in many states in tight budgetary times. Minnesota's government last year contributed $570 million to university operations, which was about the same as in the 2003-04 school year despite inflation and roughly 10% increased enrollment.

Higher education now faces pressures similar to those that reshaped other segments, Minnesota's Dr. Kaler says. "You look at American industry in general—the car industry got comfortable until the Japanese showed up, the airline industry was comfortable until it got deregulated," he says. "Now it's higher ed's turn."

A couple of observations.  There's no question public universities have a lot of waste and many useless programs.  And public universities really aren't subject to market forces. When attempts are made to reduce state subsidies, there are always cries of damaging higher education and forcing students to pay higher tuition instead of simply reducing expenditures.

Will 2013 be the year the culture wars heat up?

Here's an interesting blog by Jonathan Last from the Weekly Standard on 2013 and the continuation or heightening of the ongoing culture wars.  While lots of folks wish they would go away, they won't.  They won't because the issues go to the heart of who we are as a society and a people.  Abortion and marriage, the two hottest issues, deal with core issues of life and death and the most intimate of relationships, e.g. mothers, fathers and children.  While some argue these are only private issues they are anything but exclusively, private, personal issues.

As Last points out:

That said, I suspect we may be in for some very big, very consequential political conflicts in 2013. And my guess is that they're likely to center on the culture wars that everyone has spent the last four years pretending were over.

In the next year we're going to have two enormously important court fights. The first involves the series of lawsuits that have been filed against the Obama administration’s HHS mandate forcing religious institutions to provide insurance covering contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations. Those suits are winding their way through the courts right now. Some will likely be dismissed by lower courts. Others have legitimate shots at making it before the Supreme Court. My guess is that eventually, one of them will. When that happens, it will be like the Obamacare decision all over again, and it will crystallize for the public what the administration’s real-world attitude towards religious freedom is. And win or lose, I suspect the outcome will galvanize both churchgoers and the technocratic secularists who are bent on frog-marching religion out of the public square.

(A brief aside: I think it would have been highly instructive if some religious institution—let's say Notre Dame, just for giggles—decided that, instead of filing suit against the HHS mandate, they would simply refuse to comply. That sort of civil disobedience would have unmasked the Obama administration in very short order.)

The other big conflict to watch for in 2013 is gay marriage. The Supreme Court will decide two cases involving the issue (USA v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry). And like the HHS mandate, the gay marriage decisions point the way toward all sorts of cultural conflict. But the one that intrigues me most is that, again, like the HHS mandate, the endgame of gay marriage will be questions of religious freedom. Despite what some reporters claim, the academic wing of the gay marriage operation is already discussing how religious institutions will eventually have to be compelled to recognize same-sex marriages. And once more, like the HHS mandate, irrespective of the outcome of the Supreme Court cases, both sides are likely to be mobilized and energized.

I'm sure 2013 will give us plenty of other fireworks—both of the unknown and "known unknown" variety. But I won't be surprised if twelve months from now we look back on it as the year the culture wars reignited.

"It's the culture, stupid."

Here's a commentary by Eric Metaxas on the importance of the culture in addressing so many of the hot button political issues like gay "marriage", "medical" marijuana and the like.

Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign zeroed in on the economy with the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid."  Well, that emphasis could easily be transferred to the culture when talking about so many of the pressing political, social issues of our day.

One of my favorite quotes by Chuck Colson is one he might have spoken again after the November elections: “The kingdom of heaven will not arrive on Air Force One.”

In other words, if we want to change our culture for the better, we should not put all our eggs into a political basket. It's a lesson we Christians must remember as we begin another year.

Over the last thirty years or so, social conservatives have invested much time and effort in the world of politics. And that's a good thing. But the recent Election Day losses on the issues of same-sex “marriage,” and the legalization of marijuana are reminders of the limits of politics. As far as I’m concerned, these losses came about because we’ve not been paying enough attention to influencing our culture.

One man who knew the importance of this was Dutch statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper, who said, “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'”

And that includes the domains that most influence modern Americans: The arenas of television, films, newspapers, novels, the theater—even the world of advertising. We've neglected bringing God into these parts of His creation, and have pretty much left them to the secularists. So we should not be surprised that most new films and TV shows tend to come from a pretty uniformly liberal, secular humanist point of view.

And these arenas deeply affect the ways Americans think. For example, how much influence do you imagine the Ellen DeGeneres show has on voters' views on same-sex “marriage”? Well, I can tell you, a lot. Why? Because it’s brought a very clever, very entertaining and likeable person who just happens to be gay, into the mainstream of American culture.

But instead of cursing the darkness of Hollywood and New York—which we do too often —we should light a candle. We who embrace a biblical worldview need to get serious about creating art and culture or supporting those who do.

Metaxas' comments above don't tell me we should jettison the political arena for an exclusive focus on the culture.  Rather what's needed is balance and focus on the cultural arena as well.