Meaning of Marriage: Jean Bethke Elshtain and Robert George (ed) Spence, 2006. Yes, the US Christian Right is pontificating about the alleged 'sanctity of marriage' yet again. And equally likely, the New Zealand Christian Right will be parrotting it shortly. Let's review it in advance, then, and save New Zealand homophobes the trouble of importing books that will only go to waste in any case. No-one is talking about repealing the Civil Unions and Relationships (Statutory References) Acts here anymore. However, in case Gordon Copeland's little attention-getting stunt from December 2005 hasn't gone away, what is this little effort all about? At least Robert George and Jean Bethke Elshtain, the conservative Catholic 'natural law' theorist editors of this collection are honest about their real intentions, which are erosion of democratic institutions through promoting sectarian religious philosophies like "natural law theory" as a source of public policy, which rules out lesbian and gay relationship recognition of any sort, whether civil unions or same-sex marriages. However, they're candid about also wanting to ban abortion and contraceptive access, abolish divorce, and maintain criminal sanctions against voluntary euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. I suspect they probably also support recriminalisation of male homosexuality. They suspend all of these ambitious public policy plans on the artifice of 'natural law' theory. As regular readers of my columns will recall, so-called 'natural law' theory is based on the prescientific twelfth century Catholic teachings of Thomas Aquinas, who based his prohibtiion of gay sex as 'unnatural' before any modern psychological or genetic analyses of the origins of sexual identity and orientation were available. Therefore, why should non-Catholics support this worldview? It is refreshing to read some of the chapter headings, such as Roger Scruton's "Sacrilege and Sacrament." Scruton is entitled to believe what he wants. Predictably, we get ridiculous chapters asking us to 'think about the children." Equally predictably, it tries to pass off the work of Anthea Nagai and Robert Lerner as beinga valid literature review of studies about same-sex parenting when neither have sufficient professional expertise in research methods relevant to pediatrics and developmental psychology. Been there, read that. There are feverish attacks on the iniquities of any other model than a conservative male dominated nuclear family with no opportunities for the use of birth control or contraception, and no chance of divorce if things go wrong. Granted, continuity of parental care is important for the welfare of children, regardless of the structure of families, but I find it absolutely ridiculous and offensive that these people are continuing to neglect and ignore the plight of abusive dysfunctional families, terrorised by abusive, substance-abusing parents. I find it equally offensive to pretend that savage social welfare reductions, underfunded public alcohol and drug prevention and detox programmes, homelessness, unemployment and low poverty wages do not play their role in destroying family structures. In the real world, that is not the case. But no, solo mums and same-sex led families are all to blame for the decline and fall of western civilisation as we know it. Thankfully, outside the benighted and backward Southern United States and John Howard's federal "Liberal" Australian regime, even other Americans are starting to be wary of this simplistic rhetoric. To my fundamentalist readers. Import it if you really, really want to. But let's not pretend that religious dogma, selectively cited or deliberately distorted social science provide any magical proof that particular family structures are any better than any other. Families do not exist in a vacuum, which led to the modern welfare state and social policy. Pluralist family policies do not 'destroy' families, but negligent and destructive conservative social policies do. Appendix: Table of Contents. The Essays: Foreword by Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spellman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago and the Thomas and Dorothy Leavy Chair in the Foundations of American Freedom at Georgetown University 1 – “Sacrilege and Sacrament,” by Roger Scruton, professor of philosophy at the University of Buckingham 2 – “What About the Children? Liberal Cautions on Same- Sex Marriage,” by Don Browning, Alexander Campbell Professor Emeritus of Religious Ethics and the Social Sociences at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Elizabeth Marquardt, affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values 3 – “Changing Dynamics of the Family in Recent European History,” by Harold James, professor of history at Princeton University 4 – “Why Unilateral Divorce Has No Place in a Free Society,” by Jennifer Roback Morse, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University 5 – “The Framers' Idea of Marriage and Family,” by David F. Forte, Charles R. Emrick Jr.—Calfee, Halter