Most right-leaning commentators oppose so-called “gay marriage.”  If we become the first society in all of human history to reshape marriage so as to accommodate homosexuals, the argument goes, we will weaken this most indispensable and venerable of institutions. 

It is hard not to have at least some sympathy for this reasoning.  After all, when we get right down to it, the partisan weighing in on this debate has but two alternatives from which to choose. 

On the one hand, he can choose to either side with the overwhelming majority of human beings who have ever populated the planet by doing his best to preserve the exclusively heterosexual character of marriage.  On the other hand, he can decide to cast his vote in favor of the preferences of a minority of his contemporaries by opening marriage to homosexuals.

When we consider the issue from this perspective, most people, I should think, will recognize that the universal experience of the human species is apt to be the most reliable of guides. 

Of course, that a guide is reliable does not mean that it is infallible.  It is possible that the proponents of “gay marriage” may be correct.  Yet this is precisely the point: the mere possibility that they are in the right implies the possibility that they are wrong.   

In our personal lives, it is not infrequently necessary—and desirable—that we should take risks in order to advance our interests.  Only by moving beyond our comfort zones can we hope to grow.  But the proponents of “gay marriage” are gambling, not with their personal lives alone, but with the future well being of a civilization.

Civilization consists of a complex chain of institutions of which marriage is a critical link.  Thus, three implications follow from this.

First, marriage does not exist to satisfy the preferences or desires of individuals.  It is, then, most decidedly not a “human right.”  Rather, marriage exists in order to create and sustain civilization.  This has been the consensus of the human race.  

Second, while the conditions of marriage have indeed varied according to place and time, it has always been understood as a heterosexual union.  That is, the species has determined that civilization hinges upon children being produced, raised, and nurtured by fathers and mothers.   

Finally, because marriage is part of a seamless whole of civilization-defining institutions, changes to marriage promise to induce changes in every other institution. Or, to put it more simply, a change in marriage is nothing less than a change in civilization.

That we don’t know for certain what these changes will be is neither here nor there.  All that matters is that we can indeed be certain that changes there will be.

The burden, then, is upon the shoulders of the proponent of “gay marriage.” Considering that there isn’t a culture or society in the annals of history that has so much as dreamt, let alone promoted, the idea of homosexuals marrying, it is up to the champion of “gay marriage” to convince the rest of us that the wisdom of the species has in fact been folly—and, to hear him tell it, much worse than this.

This is an enormous task. Actually, it is impossible.  Although the defender of “gay marriage” may be stunned to hear it, he is simply not capable of forecasting all of the ramifications that a change as radical as the proposal he favors promises to entail. 

Again, it isn’t just the changes in the institution of marriage to which he must speak. It is the changes in civilization as a whole that he must address.