Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published in AltCatholicah, an online magazine aimed primarily at Catholic women, but the topic it deals with is not exclusive to Catholics. The author raises concerns about pornography that are relevant to all those striving for healthy sexual relationships. While we will let our readers decide whether and to what extent past struggles ought to be dwelt upon, we would pose the question – how does one share concerns or bring up a conversation about pornography among friends or with someone you’re dating?

It’s the conversation no dating couple wants to have.

No, I’m not talking about the “what’s our relationship status” discussion.

I’m talking about pornography.

If you are a practicing Catholic and he is too, then perhaps you haven’t given pornography much thought. You figure it isn’t a factor in your relationship. Many Catholic women, however, know better. They’ve learned the hard way that pornography is a growing problem for men and women, one that rapidly infiltrates every aspect of the relationship.

If you are in the “ignorance is bliss” category, let me give you some facts. In the last month, over 70% percent of men between the ages of 18 and 34 have looked at pornographic material. The most popular apps on smart phones are porn apps. The pornography industry brings in 13.5 billion dollars a year. That’s greater than the entire Kansas state budget of $13.41 billion for FY2013.

Pornography isn’t just a dirty habit that is retained in isolation. Priests who work in Church tribunals say that in the majority of annulment cases, one or both people were using pornography. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported that 56% of divorce cases included one person having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites. If one person is looking outside of a relationship for a distorted version of intimacy, there are going to be problems.

Whether or not pornography use is secretive, it remains a significant part of a man’s life that shuts out his wife or girlfriend, but also exposes her to its many ill-effects.

The secretive behavior that pornography demands damages the trust between two people trying to foster a romance, which must be built on trust in order to succeed. I’ve heard women worry about what their boyfriends are doing on the computer at night after their dates are over, wonder why they aren’t pretty enough to keep all of their significant other’s attention, or even feel like their boyfriend’s habit is because they are sexually unsatisfied. These side effects in turn lower the self-esteem of the women involved.

It is important then, for women to know if pornography is a factor in a relationship before getting too involved.

So, if you’re dating, how do you approach such a sensitive topic?

There isn’t an easy way to talk about a topic that thrives on secrecy. So I recommend biting the bullet in a bold but unassuming way. By bold I mean, bring up the topic in such a way that it’s clear what you are bringing up. You probably will have to use the word “pornography.” But you can ease into it, and blame it on me. For example, “I was reading an article on this Catholic web magazine about how pornography really damages relationships, and how it’s important to talk about. I was wondering, is it something you’ve ever struggled with?”

Remember that porn use is a sin that is hard to fess up to; and yes, the conversation is probably going to be awkward. No practicing Christian wants to tell their girlfriend that they’ve looked at graphic images of naked women. So be understanding that it may be a hard thing to talk about and that every person on earth, including you and me, has sinned in our lives. You are not his judge or executioner. It is important to note that many young men’s first exposure to pornography is at age 11. In other words, your boyfriend may be stuck on a path that he got on before he was old enough to resist or know better.

But also be firm. If you are considering marrying one another then you need to know if this is going to be an obstacle and, if so, that he is truly committed to stopping this vice. If he does use pornography and isn’t interested in stopping, our faith as well as statistics tell you that this man isn’t going to be a strong husband and father.

Hopefully that will not be the case. Hopefully he is either working on stopping the habit, is addicted but wants to change, or has never been exposed and wants to keep it that way. I’ll be back soon to talk about ways to keep pornography out of our lives.

*Note: Pornography is an epidemic problem that affects women in several different ways. Women not only deal with men’s usage of pornography, but also can be users themselves or be the victims of sexual exploitation. This article and any following it are just focusing on one angle of this issue.

Caitlin Bootsma is a Catholic wife, mother and writer in Northern Virginia. She is a regular contributor to http://www.aleteia.org.

1) What have you been up to since graduation? What has your experience been like? What have you learned?

Since graduation, I have been employed as a door-to-door sales rep for a mid-sized cable, phone, and internet company.  It’s been an eye-opening experience; I’ve visited the homes of many people of differing socio-economic statuses.  I’ve found that people don’t try to pretend to live in a way that they don’t.  My customers see no need to put on airs to impress me. To them I’m just a passing stranger.  Being a door-to-door sales rep would be a great job for any aspiring anthropologist!

2) How has your experience of visiting people in their homes shaped or changed your beliefs about the institution of marriage, the special role of the family in society, and integrity of sexuality?

My experience has certainly solidified what I had learned and espoused in the Anscombe Society.  It made what I learned more concrete. I wasn’t just reading about the hook-up culture anymore; I was actually witnessing the fruits thereof.  In the poorer neighborhoods, I noticed that there was a high proportion of single mothers, many of whom had no means to support themselves and were dependent on welfare or child-support. It upset me greatly to see that these children would grow up without the balance of both a father and a mother, not experiencing a stable male role model in a father.  I have such admiration for these mothers who strive to be everything for their children.

Probably what surprised me most was the actual effects of cohabitation on women.  I remembered reading about it in college, but never really thinking too much of it.  I knew that the rate of abuse of women and children was higher during these situations, but they remained hollow statistics to me.  I’d known people who were cohabiting, and it never seemed that anything terribly serious was going wrong to me.

Two harrowing stories that greeted me at the door shook that perspective from me quickly.  The first was a woman who frequently told me to return because she was waiting for the money to be able to pay for cable.  About the second or third time that I went to her house, she came out distraught and in tears. Her former boyfriend was coming to take her child away and she could not afford a legal defense!  It was awful witnessing someone preparing to have her child ripped from her like this.

Later that same evening, I heard an even more disturbing story. For a reason unknown to me, a mother sought to take her child out of a house where she lived with her boyfriend.  At this, the boyfriend grew violent and pulled out a gun.  He claimed that he only used the gun to scare her, but there were multiple gun shots visible on her car. And one on her body.  As a salesman I didn’t want to be rude, but I couldn’t help gaping in disbelief at the circular wound on her shoulder. What is what I thought? It was.

Several blocks down from where I was working, a story of a father shooting at his pregnant girlfriend for refusing to have an abortion hit the national news. After a few door-to-door visits that story, sadly, doesn’t seem so unusual anymore.

These three stories represent three different races – the importance of a stable family structure matters to all children. This isn’t an issue for just one race or ethnic group.

3) How have these interactions impacted your desire to be a leader on these issues?

When I saw the pain that these women had gone through, either right in front of me or within the recent past I wanted to help to alleviate their pain and to help ensure that it would not happen to others.  Perhaps the way it impacted my leadership the most was the desire to actually bring information on marriage to the people who need it the most—not just simply to focus on overhauling academia, as important as that is.   We should strive to bring a positive vision for marriage, family, and sexuality directly to people as  well. Unfortunately, culture is not lacking in promoting promiscuous sex and denigrating married life as tremendously boring and miserable. With too few examples of healthy marriages to emulate, the odds aren’t good that people will head in that direction.

4)  In your opinion, who has been hurt the most by our society’s changing sexual mores? Who are the most vulnerable? What implications does this have?

The impact of broken marriage disproportionally affects the poor. A strong marriage helps to offset poverty the risk of poverty.  According to research by Dr. Patrick Fagan, a married man with children will become 27 percent more productive during his working life and even during times of recession will be more likely to continue finding work if he is married.  This is perhaps the most tangible effect of a father’s love for his family: that he will go the extra mile to ensure that all members have the best he is able to provide.  A piece in the New York Times last year likewise affirmed this truth. The article “Two Classed in America, Divided by ‘I Do” describes the tremendous economic and emotional value of a family that sticks together.  It found that single parenthood alone accounted for 15 to 25 percent of widening income gap in America.

Strangely enough, many of those who do promote a culture of promiscuity (perhaps none more obviously than the former editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, Helen Gurley Brown) don’t actually preach what they practice.  For whatever reason, cultural elites seem to know in their personal lives that what they promote is a rather difficult way to live.

Education in schools also is lacking.  We are taught how to have sex, but not how to date in a way that prepares us for marriage.  During my training for my sales position, I spent hours doing role playing exercises.  We practiced handling common and uncommon customer objections so that they didn’t surprise us when they came up.  I can’t help but wonder if some practical skills training might better prepare us for the world of dating and married life. It sure would be nice to have seen the Pitt administration more focused on helping us learn these essential life skills that will impact us in the future than on making sure we were prepared with condoms for a random weekend hook-up.

Gabriel Xavier currently works in sales for a communications and technology company in Pennsylvania.

How did you initially become involved in the U Pitt Anscombe Society? What motivated you to be part of that campus group?

When a particularly graphic and distasteful article was published in the student paper the Pitt News, I wrote a letter to the editor in complaint. At the time, the Anscombe Society was just being formed and I wasn’t yet aware of it. One of my friends, who was in the group, saw my letter and invited me to become part of the Anscombe Society – via FaceBook of all things! My time as a member of the Anscombe Society truly influenced the way I perceive the world.  It gave me a crash course in an education of the family—and what could be more important than that?

What achievements are you most proud of during your time as a member of the U Pitt Anscombe Society?

There are two moments I am particularly proud of, actually. The first is the one that really put Anscombe on the map, in terms of campus awareness.   At the time we were just getting started and not even an official campus group, however we had heard that the campus was hosting a safe-sex fair in the common areas of the freshmen dorms.   After looking at the information that they were handing out we realized that students who believed in waiting for marriage would be marginalized by this fair. So we decided to hold a counter-demonstration where we could hand out materials to promote chastity.

We brought our own fliers as well as papier-mâché flowers to hand out.   On our flowers was written, “Gucci, Prada, Love. Which do you prefer—real or counterfeit?” People loved those flowers!   We also had a large poster and a petition for people to sign, saying that they would pledge to be chaste for this weekend.  We got quite a few signatures. Though as we soon learned, not everyone was happy to have us there and someone had called the police on our small demonstration.  The police made us stand in two straight lines so as not to block traffic and we complied.  However that didn’t satisfy the school and soon a representative from the housing department asked us to leave.  We presented them the student handbook where it stated that individuals students had the right to distribute information and the housing representative left us alone, for a short time.  That night we received an email telling us not to return.  At that point our president put out a press-release to our local newspapers. One paper agreed to cover the incident. The next day we met up with the reporter and photographer and then went to hand out our information. The school’s health fair did not show up!

Our story did end up running in the newspaper and the school was so embarrassed at their illiberal treatment of us that they offered us a seat at the table.  We were allowed to create a program to counter their “sex in the lounge” program available in all of the dorms on safe-sex.  We were also allowed to bring a guest speaker to campus.

The second moment was on Valentine’s Day. We distributed over 1,000 fliers on the harms of pornography in response to the Pitt New’s Pornographic Valentine’s Day edition.  I was proud that so many of us were willing to stand outside (in the freezing Pittsburgh February!) to tell the truth about such a socially destructive issue that too often goes ignored.  One women even came back, wanted to learn more about joining the club.

Gabriel Xavier currently works in sales for a communications and technology company in Pennsylvania. Stay tuned for the rest of the interview!

We were a failed relationship. The kind that starts off on the right foot and then for what seemed to be no good reason at all – ended abruptly. Conversations in coffee shops lasted for hours, long walks without a destination always seemed to be going somewhere, and drives in the crisp fall air couldn’t have gotten any better. But as the weeks and months flew by, the reality of the relationship’s imperfections started to sink in – there were our differences, our concerns, and the long distance across four states.  What seemed to be so simple at first suddenly became more complicated than we had bargained for.

In the aftermath of any relationship, many of us ask the question, was it the wrong relationship? Was it something I did? Could we have made it last? Of course, many relationships should end for numerous reasons, but what about the ones that really seemed like they could work? If only we had been willing to listen, to forgive, to adapt, to grow together instead of apart, to recognize a deep friendship that was shared – a friendship that could have led to marriage.

Our society seems to talk readily about making a marriage work, or, as Dr. John Townsend puts it, “how to be a best friend forever” to your spouse. Most would agree that striving to make a marriage work is a good thing – it brings a couple closer together, it provides a stable family for children, and it contributes to economic wellbeing.

But what about making a dating relationship work? A marriage doesn’t start from nothing; it grows out of a relationship – a real relationship with real challenges and real conflicts. So if we are going to teach people how to make their marriages work, shouldn’t we start with dating relationships? This of course doesn’t mean that there aren’t numerous good reasons to walk away from a dating relationship. But even the best of friendships is not perfect – and we owe it to ourselves to recognize that. It is up to the couple to decide, together, if they are willing to put in the effort for the sake of their relationship. (And the simple act of putting in the effort to “make a relationship work” can prove a valuable lesson in discerning what’s worth the effort and when to walk away as we start to see whether the person we are dating puts in the effort now–and is likely to later on in a marriage.)

In a society of ready-made things – ready-made clothes, ready-made food, ready-made entertainment – it is easy for us to assume that if our relationship isn’t progressing exactly as we had envisioned, it must be wrong. But no relationship comes ready-made, and a relationship is never, (to borrow the ubiquitous phrase) “made to be.” Rather, a couple makes the relationship to be, and at times this is very hard work!  As Joanna Hyatt (contributor to Verily Magazine) states, “Marriage is not Valentine’s Day Every Day.”

And while couples in a dating relationship may think worn advice in the vein of “relationships are hard and require self-sacrifice,” only applies to married couples, this would be a mistake. If we are to model our relationship on the loving, lifelong marriages around us, then it is absolutely essential that a couple, together, be willing to refine their imperfections and grow for the good of each other and the relationship as a whole. The incredible joy that comes from constantly giving to the relationship – out of love for the good of the other – might just surprise you.

As a recently engaged twenty-three-year-old, I could not ask for anything more from my relationship with my fiancé. We are not perfect, and like every relationship we have better days than others, but it is the journey that we have shared, every step of the way, on good days and bad, that has led us to where we are now. We were that “failed relationship” that ended so abruptly. We were the relationship that struggled to find the answer to the question, “was this made to last?” And together we wrote the answer.

Kelsey Long is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and Campus Outreach Director at the Love and Fidelity Network. 

It might just be the recent release of Les Misérables, but something about political protests feels very French to me.  (And not just because the French just had their 2nd March for Marriage – La Manif Pour Tous – which drew 1.4 million people last weekend). The French overthrew one king, watched as an emperor took his place, got rid of him, and then suffered through several more decades of chaos while struggling for democracy. In short, they have a strong commitment to social justice, individual liberty, and civil rights.

I was happy to see something of the esprit français yesterday at our nation’s first March for Marriage; many people showed up in opposition to our movement to protect traditional marriage in the law. In their eyes, they were there to defend equality and justice. While I praise them for their strong commitment to fairness in the face of (what they perceive to be) injustice, I fear that there is a deep flaw in their thinking.

Supporters of same-sex marriage, like the French revolutionaries, equate liberty with pure autonomy. “Freedom” is the same thing as “the ability to do whatever you want.” With this as their main moral contention, it is no surprise that they view legal restrictions which seek to uphold man-woman marriage as unjust discrimination against equality.

The point of view outlined above reveals an impoverished understanding of human nature that has two pertinent consequences. Firstly, if one holds that true freedom lies in doing what one pleases, one must also hold that human nature is totally ambiguous and that happiness lies in doing whatever one wants to do. This simply cannot be the case; now matter how many chocolate cakes I want to eat, I can only eat so many before I put myself at risk for heart disease. We human beings are not disembodied minds; we must respect our corporality.

Secondly, if human nature is ambiguous, that means that marriage is as well. For those who support traditional marriage, marriage is an institution that is based in human nature and that precedes the state. Marriage arose in human history because men and women had a tendency to bond with one another and this bonding had a tendency to produce new life. As such, marriage could present itself to the state as a natural institution that brought the next generation into being. The state recognized the potency of marriage and saw that it had a vested interest in protecting the next generation for the good of society. It is only when marriage is understood to have a specific nature, itself based on human nature, that it means anything to the state at all.

Moreover, states often do more than merely endorse or recognize marriage, they integrate it into their legislature so as to protect it and promote it. In doing so, they ensure that a number of benefits follow for the sake of married families and, therefore, for the sake of the states themselves. For example, by singling out marriage as the only human relationship to merit legislation, the state gives marriage pride of place in a society and makes it something for its people to strive for. By requiring married spouses to remain faithful and committed to one another (by disallowing divorce or by making divorce acceptable only in special circumstances), the state assures children that their parents will assume responsibility for them. By allowing married couples tax benefits, the state ensures that married couples will be able to provide for their children.

However, if marriage is ambiguous, then it loses its intrinsic connection to procreation and, therefore, any reason for being subject to legal regulation. If marriage is not protected by the law because of its procreative power, then the law is merely regulating friendship, love, emotional connection, and/or commitment, which the state has no business regulating.

As the social science data on this subject develops, and as people critically consider the potential – and limitations – of their human nature, I hope that more people will begin to recognize the special character of marriage. Hopefully they will see that, by protecting marriage as it is, they are doing their nation a great service because, by extension, they will be doing their best to ensure that every child be brought up by the man and woman who brought him into this world.

Those lovers of equality and justice that I saw at the March for Marriage therefore have nothing to fear from our defense of traditional marriage. To the contrary, defending traditional marriage promotes equality by giving every child the best possible starting-point in life. Furthermore, it promotes justice by providing for every child what he deserves – a loving mother and father.

Matthew Dugandzic is beginning doctoral studies in Christian Ethics at the Catholic University of America.

By: Ryan T. Anderson

Scholars have filed more than 50 amicus briefs with the Supreme Court urging it to uphold California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). While the media seems intent on ignoring these briefs and hyping the briefs on the other side, the sheer number and quality of the briefs in defense of laws recognizing marriage as the union of a man and a woman is impressive.

Austin Nimocks, Senior Counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, explains the significance:

During the Supreme Court’s 2011-2012 term, an average of only 10 amicus briefs per case were filed. And in the historic landmark case of Roe v. Wade, only 26 total amicus briefs were filed.

By comparison a combined total of 58 amicus briefs were filed in support of Prop 8 and DOMA. The pro-marriage arguments are deep, rich, well-reasoned, common sense- and common good-based, and worthy of serious reflection by the Court and any other American interested in the future of our most important social institution.

Here are just a few of the arguments:

Family law expert Helen Alvare argues that society’s interest in the upbringing of children and marriage’s unique ability to serve that interest explains the government’s involvement in marriage. Tracing the consequences of the past half century’s “retreat from marriage,” and its disparate effects on America’s poor, Alvare argues that redefining marriage to exclude sexual complementarity would cause social harms to increase. The consequences of redefining marriage is the focus of the amicus brief that I filed with my co-authors Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese responds to charges that marriage laws violate legal guarantees of equal protection and argues that same-sex and opposite-sex relationships are not similarly situated:

Given the near-universal view, across different societies and different times, that a principal, if not the principal, purpose of marriage is the channeling of the unique procreative abilities of opposite-sex relationships into a societally beneficial institution, it is clear that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to that fundamental purpose.

A group of international jurists and academics points out that not until the year 2000 did any political body recognize same-sex unions as marriages, that even today only 12 non-U.S. jurisdictions recognize same-sex unions as marriages, and that “same-sex marriage is not required by international human rights norms”:

The European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the French Constitutional Court, the Italian Constitutional Court, the German Federal Constitutional Court, and the New Zealand Court of Appeal have all rejected the notion that same-sex marriage is a constitutional or human right. 

Indeed, a group of historians and other professors explain the historical consensus that existed prior to the year 2000: “While the procedures and incidents of marriage have varied over time and across cultures, its primary form and legal meaning have remained remarkably constant. … Marriage as an opposite-sex institution is a universal phenomenon.”

A team of social science professors present the scientifically robust data that exists on family structure and child wellbeing.

Indeed, the only studies that were based on large, random, representative samples tended to reveal … significant differences in the outcomes of children raised by parents in a same-sex relationship and those raised by a married biological mother and father. What is clear is that much more study must be done on these questions. But there is no dispute that a biological mother and father provide, on average, an effective and proven environment for raising children. And it is reasonable to conclude that a mother and father function as a complementary parenting unit and that each tends to contribute something unique and beneficial to child development.

Eminent political scientists Leon Kass and Harvey Mansfield caution the Court against accepting politicized science: “Claims that science provides support for constitutionalizing a right to same-sex marriage must necessarily rest on ideology. Ideology may be pervasive in the social sciences, especially when controversial policy issues are at stake, but ideology is not science.”

The Attorneys General for 20 states defend the rational basis of their states’ marriage law and the irrationality of redefining marriage: “No limiting principle for excluding other groupings of individuals.” And 37 scholars of federalism and judicial restraint argue that “[p]rinciples of federalism and judicial restraint urge this Court to exercise caution when considering the expansion of constitutional rights in areas of contentious social dispute.” The laboratories of democracy—not unelected judges—should make marriage policy for the nation.

Several briefs argue that trying to cast gay and lesbian Americans as a “suspect class” rests both on bad science and bad politics. For example, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School chief psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh explains the academic research on sexual orientation:

Sexual orientation is neither a “discrete” nor “immutable” characteristic in the legal sense of those terms.… Scholars do not know enough about what sexual orientation is, what causes it, and why and how it sometimes changes for the Court to recognize it as the defining feature of a new suspect class.

A brief from the Concerned Women for America points out that gay and lesbian Americans are hardly a politically powerless class. In fact, they have the President of the United States advocating on their behalf. If marriage policy is to be changed, it ought to be done legislatively.

While the media takes little note of their voices, many Americans who experience same-sex attraction are opposed to redefining marriage. Two separate briefs (here and here) make their case.

Likewise, two additional briefs (here and here) argued that laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman are nothing like laws that prevented African-Americans and whites from marrying. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty argues that when courts create rights to same-sex marriage they create new hazards for religious liberty.

Many, many more briefs could be highlighted, and the Alliance Defending Freedom has listed a selection of them here. In the coming days Heritage will spotlight in greater detail these briefs. Marriage matters and the Court should recognize the Constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials when it comes to making marriage policy.

Ryan T. Anderson is Editor of The Public Discourse and William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at the Heritage Foundation. 

In December of last year, shortly after the presidential election, ABC‘s George Will asserted on “This Week” that “the opposition to gay marriage is dying.”  Noting that defenders of man-woman marriage tend to be from an older generation, he suggested that public opinion is headed in the direction of favoring same-sex marriage (SSM) as older generations die off.

Many Americans, both those for and against SSM, undoubtedly share the same impression about the future of marriage.  But is this fatalism reasonable?  Should we just submit to the “inevitable,” and give up the marriage issue already? After all, we are constantly hearing that we are on the wrong side of history.

Ryan T. Anderson and Andrew T. Walker answer very clearly in their December 11, 2012 piece “Not Dead Yet”—No, we should not. They raise reasonable objections to such a fatalist approach—objections that are worth revisiting now as we approach the Supreme Court’s consideration of the Perry case, which will decide the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8.

Conceding that exit polls in the 2012 election did show that the youth vote favored redefining marriage, Anderson and Walker suggest that this is no reason to give up on the marriage question. Rather, we should “redouble our efforts to re-educate a generation of heirs to the sexual revolution’s bitter fruits.”  They draw a comparison between the marriage issue and the abortion debate following Roe v. Wade.  In 1973, everyone thought that the Supreme Court had ended the abortion question with their decision. The front-page headline of the New York Times the following day declared the debate over. But history has proven otherwise.

Over the past 40 years Pro-life advocates have continued to fight intellectual, legal, and cultural battles—and have made substantial progress.  Anderson and Walker note that “[o]n the question of the humanity of the child in the womb, pro-lifers have won the intellectual battle decisively.”  And today’s young people have benefitted from this work by inheriting these arguments which they continue to apply – and sharpen.

Now is the time “to do that work on a new issue,” they conclude, and they like their chances for two reasons.  First, as today’s youth grow up, marry, and have children, they will gain greater insight into the nature of marriage and a greater appreciation for sexual complementarity in marriage, especially in parenting.  An individual’s opinions do not always remain static, but often shift over a lifetime based on new experiences and learning. Second, if the authors are right about the probable harms of redefining marriage, the experience of such a fallout will naturally lead to a reassessment of the question.

While Anderson and Walker’s reasons for having hope about the future of marriage are encouraging, we cannot wait for today’s youth to grow up.  For the sake of the next generation, we cannot afford to get the marriage issue wrong now.

While exit polls and pop culture may suggest that today’s youth is fully on board with redefining marriage (and all sexual norms for that matter), we remain a very impressionable generation.  Even if many young men and women are not apt to listen to the older generations on this issue, they will listen to their peers.  It is easy and exciting to assert independence from one’s elders, but few want to stand alone among their colleagues, friends, or classmates.

Today’s young men and women are not the problem with the marriage question. They are the answer.  If thousands of Millennials were to speak out in defense of marriage, their peers (not to mention the fatalist-minded Baby Boomers) would be forced to think twice about the future of marriage.

The Love and Fidelity Network is working to help this generation gather together to defend marriage this March 26th for the Marriage March in Washington, D.C.  We need to show the Supreme Court that they don’t want another Roe v. Wade on their hands by “deciding” the marriage question for us.  And we need to give a new face to the marriage movement that shows its defenders are not a dying breed, but a vibrant—and growing—movement.

Don’t believe it? Come to D.C. and see for yourself on March 26^th.

Cassandra L. Hough is the Founder of and Senior Advisor at the Love and Fidelity Network.

By: Kendel Christensen

As an alternative education teacher in Philadelphia, I frequently remind my students to ask themselves “Am I being part of the solution or part of the problem?” I have been amazed at how civil even the toughest students can become when invited to see their actions as they really are.

Last week I took a break from my work to attend the Columbia University Fidelio Society’s conference on the changing shape of the Family in Modern Society—something I see the effects of every day in the classroom. The speakers illuminated topics ranging from the economic well-being of families to a theological treatment of chastity. All were well-prepared and worthy of consideration. The most controversial topic addressed was, unsurprisingly, the definition of marriage. One speaker in particular, Sherif Girgis, rigorously defended marriage as an exclusive man-woman relationship.

When exploring politically-charged issues, one often encounters a high degree of friction when different sides interact, ranging from fights to heated threats, from frustrated accusations to shouting matches that ignore one’s arguments altogether. What I experienced at this conference was decidedly different from many of the emotional theatrics that often short-circuit reasonable conversation on the topic. I was initially worried as protesters piled in for Girgis’ presentation; some of the signs the held bore potentially-incendiary language. But once it began, not once did a protester unduly interrupt or overtly disrespect the speaker. Rather, they stayed true to their objective – a silent protest – and appeared to listen intently. The speaker did not soften his position to appeal to the now-stacked crowd, either.

What followed during the Q&A session was an experience I wish could be replicated on myriad issues across the political spectrum. The protesters directly and pointedly questioned all aspects of the speaker’s position—nothing was off limits. The speaker responded with equal directness: he deflated loaded questions, called out fallacies, and unabashedly pointed out inconsistencies in competing arguments.

Both Girgis and the crowd stayed completely civil throughout the session. The moderator, Dr. Paul Kerry, lauded several questions for their civil tone, praising one student in particular who began a question with a sincere “please.”

I was reminded of a saying I once came across in a Buddhist text:

In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

No matter which side of the marriage debate we find ourselves on, I sincerely hope both sides will take this message to heart, following the example of Girgis and the Columbia College Democrats at this conference and remembering that both sides of even the most divisive issues are searching for truth and seeking to help the world as they understand it. The moment we realize this, acknowledging the humanity of our opponents and refusing to dismiss them as completely irrational, we gain the power to change the tone of the conversation. And we become “part of the solution.”

Kendel Christensen is a second-year Teach for America Corps member and a student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

By: Kyle Dontoh

This past weekend, Lerner Hall was host to the Family in Modern Society Conference, arranged by students here at Columbia. The conference featured speakers from various universities who spoke on a multitude of topics, including the socioeconomic benefits of stable families, the differences in the adult quality of life for low-income children in married and unmarried families, and, yes, a defense of “traditional marriage.” If you were to ask around campus, you could very easily get the impression that a conclave of fundamentalist, homophobic demagogues was holding the conference. As I left my dorm to head to the conference’s opening session, I was actually asked if I was going to that “anti-gay thing.” As a supporter of marriage equality, I found the slander—unintentional as it was—to be particularly stinging.

Earlier in the week, I had received an invitation to take part in a pro-LGBT rights rally on campus and had considered going, unaware that the event being protested was the conference that I was planning on attending. As I approached Lerner, I was slightly confused about the intent of the picketers—I hadn’t been under the impression that this was an anti-gay conference.

The lectures were thoughtful and incisive—so much so that I quickly discarded my original plan of staying for a few sessions before returning to work. The speakers, to a T, were academics who based their arguments and presentations on facts and reason, not on bigotry or prejudice. Only one speaker, author Dawn Eden, made an argument based on religious grounds, and her lecture, “Everything is Tolerated and Nothing is Forgiven,” was about chastity and dealing with the excesses of permissiveness, not about the LGBT community. Only three speakers broached the issue of same-sex relationships, and only two of those three explicitly passed judgment on these relationships.

Even then, the arguments were made on strictly rational grounds. Lynn Wardle outlined the case for traditional marriage on the notion that the family was the original, fundamental building block of society as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Disagree as I may, this was not the rambling of a bigot. This was a reasoned, principled argument based on a fundamental respect for the LGBT community coupled with a specific interpretation of American history.

As I listened to the issues—both agreeing and disagreeing at times—I felt a particular sense of excitement, picking up viewpoints I have seldom heard since coming to Columbia. I couldn’t help but notice something else as well, though. The room was, at best, half-full, yet I had been told that the event was sold out. It was revealed, eventually, that many of the tickets had been taken by the Columbia University Democrats, of all groups. I was predictably confused as to what the Democrats would want to do with a conference like this. Yet, perhaps more pressingly, I wondered, “Where are they?”

They eventually made an appearance, albeit well into the afternoon, during Sherif Girgis’ lecture. They stood silently, holding up signs advocating marriage equality and tolerance, as Girgis, a Rhodes Scholar and J.D. candidate at Yale, made his case for marriage as between a man and a woman. When he was done, they left. Still, despite the protest, a large number of seats had remained unfilled. Throughout the day, a few students trickled in, asking about the conference, and were invariably seated because of the sheer surplus of space. Many more at Columbia and in the community, however, were denied this chance, even if this was not the intent of the Democrats when reserving tickets in bulk.

From the start, the CU Democrats seemed misinformed—if not intent on spreading misinformation—about the purpose of the forum. It was not, as some that day said, an “anti-gay marriage tirade,” but a debate on the status of the modern family. The lectures did not express mainstream American thought, or even liberal thought. In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama called for “removing the financial deterrents to marriage for low-income couples, and doing more to encourage fatherhood—because what makes you a man isn’t the ability to conceive a child, it’s having the courage to raise one.” Despite this, the issue of the future of the family is a conversation that the CU Democrats seem unwilling to allow to take place, much less to take part in, despite their physical presence.

Our university benefits from pluralism, a free exchange of ideas, and the constant intercourse between competing schools of thought. Sometimes, a moral consensus emerges—such as the heartening decision of many of the Ivy League Democratic and Republican associations to endorse marriage equality. But a consensus is not a golden rule; It is not fixed. It should not be immune to debate. I happen to agree with that consensus, but when we place name-calling, intimidation, and disruption above an honest discussion of the issues, we all lose.

The author is a Columbia College first year. This opinion piece originally appeared in the Columbia Spectator on February 17th. 

We often speak about dignity as something that we can lose or forget if we don’t hold onto it.  As if it were a virtue that we must practice like courage or honesty.  This betrays a misunderstanding of what dignity is all about. We don’t have dignity at some times but not at others in the same way that we might be honest one moment but lie another.  Rather, dignity is inherent to us at all times.

Dignity is the permanent quality of being worthy, noble, honorable, and whole as human beings.  What does this have to do with love and sex and all that good stuff?

Think about it this way:  If you love a person, you don’t just appreciate some aspect of him or her (“I adore your body, but simply can’t take your personality.”), but rather, you esteem all of who he or she is as a person.  This is where dignity comes into play.  To love someone fully as a person, you must respect him or her as honorable, as noble, as a whole being.

So dignity – which involves a respect for the physical, emotional, and mental aspects of a person – is especially relevant in matters of love and sex.  The latter is more than just a physical act – sex affects us mentally and emotionally as well.  As such, it has the unique potential to be a beautiful manifestation of an all-encompassing love.  When the physical union is accompanied by a mental and emotional unity, sex is a celebration of the dignity of both individuals.  This kind of comprehensive union is most fully found in lasting marriage.

Hooking up, on the other hand, is an affront to dignity.  Scoping out a guy or gal to take home for the night is like looking over a used car.  It ignores his or her mental and emotional being and treats the person as a physical thing for one’s utility (“Does it drive well?  Are there any dents in the hood or scratches on the bumper?”).  This is radically different from marital self-giving.  Hooking up is not a gift of the self to the other, but a theft of pleasure.  It is not a full union of body, heart, and mind, but a separate, individual experience of pleasure.

Yet we’re often told that as long as a hook up is consensual, it’s fine.  But because dignity is an integral part of us, our consent doesn’t have any bearing on it.  We can’t choose when to have dignity and when not to.  We can’t leave it with the babysitter for the night out and then come back for it later.  It is always with us.  We can, however, choose when to act in accord with our dignity.

Choosing dignity means respecting the complete unifying potential of our sexuality and others’ rather than just hooking up again and again.  After all, when casual, no-strings-attached sex leaves us dissatisfied, it’s not only because this is less than what we want.  It’s because this is less than what we – and sex – are meant to be.

T. Z. Horton is a sophomore at Princeton University where he is studying Political Philosophy and Spanish.  He is from Dallas, Texas and can be reached at thorton@princeton.edu. Posters for the Words That Still Matter campaign were designed by Jason J. Bach. Read more about the campaign here. View the campaign website www.wordsthatstillmatter.com.