rational autonomous actors, they are the
immature products of sexual relations
The Institution Formerly
Known as Marriage
by Jennifer Roback Morse
The Iowa court’s recent decision does not
simply broaden marriage, it radically
changes its nature. While marriage
previously served public purposes of
attaching mothers and fathers to their
children and one another, now marriage
merely serves as affirmation of adult
feelings.
The Iowa Supreme Court recently proved
that the critics of same-sex “marriage” are
correct: we are not being urged to make
marriage more inclusive, but to radically
redefine the nature of marriage itself. With
its decision, the Iowa Supreme Court
covertly but profoundly changed the
meaning of marriage. The Court abolished
the essential public purpose of marriage, and
replaced it with a new understanding of
marriage that is neither essential nor public.
The Institution Formerly Known as
Marriage will be an empty shell in Iowa. As
the movement to redefine marriage spreads
across the country, citizens should look to
Iowa to see what this actually entails.
The essential purpose of marriage is to
attach mothers and fathers to their children
and to one another. Absent this purpose, we
would not need marriage as a distinct social
institution. Human beings are not born as
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
between a man and a woman, and they need
the assistance of adults to survive. Marriage
exists, in all times and places, to solve this
social problem. If our offspring were born as
adults, ready to live independently, or if we
reproduced through some form of asexual
process, we would not need anything like
marriage.
Marriage also has a profoundly social
purpose. Marriage creates its own small
society consisting of mother, father, and
children. That small social unit contributes
to the larger society by creating a
functioning future—the next generation.
Everyone benefits from having a next
generation that can sustain the society and
keep its institutions going. Even when I
personally am old, and even if I have not
had any children myself, I benefit from the
fact that younger people are building cars
and houses, providing medical and legal
care, starting new businesses, and running
old ones.
In modern developed countries, the family
also saves the state a lot of money by taking
care of its own dependent young, rather than
foisting that responsibility onto the
taxpayers. Thus, the benefits of marriage go
far beyond the benefits to the individual
members of the family.
So, what did the Iowa Supreme Court have
to say about the purposes of marriage? Did
they view the requirement that marriage be
between a man and a woman as a violation
of the principle of equal protection? Indeed.
As the Court argued, “Equal protection
demands that laws treat alike all people who
are ‘similarly situated with respect to the
legitimate purposes of the law.’” If the Court
can convince itself that the dual gender
requirement bears no relationship to the
State’s purpose in having a marriage statute
in the first place, then that requirement
violates the Equal Protection clause of the
Iowa Constitution.
It should be evident that if the purpose of
marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to
their children and to one another, then the
dual gender requirement is perfectly
permissible. Same-sex couples and opposite-
sex couples are not the same with respect to
this purpose. The Court had to come up with
a very limited understanding of the purposes
of marriage in order to maintain that
opposite-sex and same-sex couples are in
fact similarly situated.
The Court enumerated several purposes
directly. Marriage provides an institutional
basis for defining relational rights and
responsibilities; marriage allows people to
pool their resources; marriage recognizes
people’s commitments; marriage provides
comfort and happiness; marriage is a status,
not a contract.
But these reasons do not explain why we
need marriage in particular. I have a
relationship with my next-door neighbor.
My family pools resources with other
members of a boat club. I have
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
commitments to my employees and business
associates. A pet brings me comfort and
happiness. We do not need the unique
relationship called marriage for any of these
purposes.
The Court alluded to several other possible
purposes, without including them within its
list of state purposes. “Therefore, with
respect to the subject and the purposes of
Iowa’s marriage laws, we find that the
plaintiffs are similarly situated compared to
heterosexual persons. Plaintiffs are in
committed and loving relationships, many
raising families, just like heterosexual
couples. Moreover, official recognition of
their status provides an institutional basis for
defining their fundamental relational rights
and responsibilities, just as it does for
heterosexual couples.”
The Court does not seem to realize that if
these purposes really exhaust the list of
legitimate state purposes of marriage, then
there is no reason to have marriage as a
distinct legal structure in the first place.
Moreover, these are all private purposes, not
public purposes, of marriage.
The same-sex couples before the Court
claim to be committed and to love each
other. Why do we need marriage for that?
I’m committed to my sister. I love my best
friend. Are we second class citizens because
we are not married to each other? There is
no state purpose whatsoever to be served by
my having some legal statement or
affirmation attached to my love for my
sister. Besides, who really wants the Court,
or the state or anyone else saying that our
love is important to the state? People’s
feelings are none of the state’s business.
The Court seems to understand this, for it
gently and subtly elides the key issue of
marriage law when it goes on to say:
“Society benefits, for example, from
providing same-sex couples a stable
framework within which to raise their
children . . . just as it does when that
framework is provided for opposite-sex
couples.” But wait a minute: How in the
world does a same-sex couple obtain a child
that is “theirs?”
This is precisely the way in which same-sex
couples differ from opposite-sex couples.
No child is born from a homosexual union.
A child born to one of them has another
parent who has been quietly escorted into
the lab or the backdoor, to make the
conception possible. That person is quickly
escorted right back out the door, before he
can claim any parental rights, or the child
can claim any relational rights. Some of us
believe that these two people, the child and
the opposite-sex parent, require and deserve
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
some protection. But the Court of Iowa does
not think them even worth mentioning.
The social purpose of marriage has always
been to attach mothers and fathers to their
children, and to each other. This universal
social purpose does not even make it onto
the Iowa Court’s short list. The reason
should be obvious: opposite-sex couples and
same-sex couples are not similarly situated
with respect to that purpose of marriage. If
the Court found that attaching children to
their parents and parents to one another is a
purpose of marriage, they would be unable
to sustain their claim that man woman
marriage violates the principle of equal
protection under the law.
Society needs marriage because children
have rights to care from their parents, rights
which they can not defend on their own.
Societies create marriage to pro-actively
protect the legitimate entitlements of
children, and to provide for the future of the
society. According to the Supreme Court of
Iowa, these provisions for children are no
longer the purpose of marriage. We are left
to guess as to how this truly essential public
function will be performed, now that the
Court has surreptitiously removed it from
the list of marriage’s jobs.
Iowa is a relatively homogenous and
prosperous state. This newly created lacuna
in the purposes of the law may not harm “marriage” by judicial decree, they proved
Iowa much at first. But other states have our point for us.
more diversity of opinion and practice about
socially acceptable behavior, as well as Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute.
greater economic and social stresses on All rights reserved.
married life and childrearing. In those states, Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an
the cost of redefining marriage is likely to be economist and the Founder and President of
more pronounced and immediate. the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit educational
organization devoted to bringing hope and
In sum, the Court has elevated the private, encouragement for lifelong married love.
She is also the author of Love and
inessential purposes of marriage to the
Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a
highest point in the hierarchy of values of Village and Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long
marriage. Given this new understanding, Love in a Hook-Up World.
neither the longevity of marriage, nor
fidelity within marriage can remain as
important values. By the time the opponents
of conjugal marriage are finished with their
redefinitions, marriage will be little more
than a five-year renewable-term contract.
The Institution Formerly Known as
Marriage will be nothing but a couple of
individuals, loosely stapled together by the
state.

Advocates of natural marriage, as opposed

to genderless marriage, believe that society
needs marriage to be a child-centered,
gender-based social institution. We have
been arguing all along that same-sex
“marriage” will be a gender-neutral
institution, in which children are only a
peripheral concern. When the Supreme
Court of Iowa established same-sex

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.