PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF:

First, the church needs to present a case for biblical sexuality that is appealing and that engages the best of modern thought. The virtues of chastity and lifelong marriage are enriching, but after fifty years, the church has still not devised a compelling response to the sexual revolution. The legal redefinition of marriage could take place when and where it did only because the majority of Americans lacked a sound understanding of the nature of man and the nature of marriage.

The church needs to find a way to capture the moral imagination of the next generation. It needs to make the truth about human sexuality and its fulfillment in marriage not only attractive and appealing, but noble and exhilarating. This is a truth worth staking one's life on.

In the face of the seduction of cohabitation, no-fault divorce, extra-marital sex, nonmarital childbearing, pornography, and the hook-up culture, what can the church offer as a more fulfilling, more humane, more liberating alternative? Until it finds an answer, the church will make no headway in the same-sex marriage debate, which is the fulfillment of those revolutionary sexual values.

A proper response to the sexual revolution also requires engaging--not ignoring--the best of contemporary thought, especially the best of contemporary secular thought. What visions of the human person and sex, of marriage and personal wholeness do today's thinkers advance? Exactly where and why do their ideas go wrong? The church needs to show that the truth is better than a lie. And that the truth can defeat all lies. I provide a philosophical defense of the truth in Truth Overruled, we need theologians to continue developing theological defenses.

In these efforts, we shouldn't discount the potential of slumbering Christian communities to wake up. It's easy to forget that, in 1973, the Southern Baptists were in favor of abortion rights and supported Roe v. Wade. Today they are at the forefront of the pro-life movement. Christians who are on the wrong side of the marriage debate today can change their minds if we help them.

The church's second task is to develop ministries for those who experience same-sex attraction and gender identity conflicts. Such persons, for whom fidelity to the truth about human sexuality requires special courage, need our loving attention. Pope Francis's description of the church as a field hospital after a battle is especially apt here.

These ministries are like the pro-life movement's crisis pregnancy centers. Abortion is sold as the most humane and compassionate response to an unplanned pregnancy. It's not. And pro-lifers' unprecedented grassroots response to women gives the lie to that claim. Likewise, those who believe the truth about marriage should be the first to walk with men and women dealing with same-sex attraction or gender identity conflicts, showing what a truly humane and compassionate response looks like. [...]

After all, the conjugal view of marriage--that it is inherently ordered to one-flesh union and hence to family life--defines the limits of marriage, leaving room for meaningful nonmarital relationships, especially deep friendships. This is liberating. The same-sex attracted, like everyone else, should have strong and fulfilling relationships. Marriage isn't the only relationship that matters. And as I explain in my new book, the conjugal view of marriage doesn't denigrate other relationships. Those who would redefine marriage as a person's most intense or deepest or most important relationship devalue friendship by implying that it's simply less: less meaningful, less fulfilling. The greatest of Justice Kennedy's errors may be his assertion that without same-sex marriage some people are "condemned to live in loneliness." His philosophy of marriage is anemic. And as our society has lost its understanding of marriage, it has suffered a corresponding diminution, even cheapening, of friendship.

We all need community, and those who for whatever reason never marry will know certain hardships that the married are spared. We should bring those left dry by isolation into other forms of community--as friends, fellow worshippers, neighbors, comrades in a cause, de facto members of our families, big siblings to our children, and regular guests in our homes.

It is important to hold up the truth about marriage for everyone to see. The first step of explaining, defending, and teaching marriage is defining it.

Now that the Supreme Court has taken the decision about same-sex marriage out of the hands of the American people, those of us who believe in marriage have to think about the long-term effort to restore a true understanding of marriage in our nation.

The first step is to clarify what marriage is so that we can explain it to others in a coherent way. Although there is no one way to do this, there are fundamental elements that are a necessary part of any definition.

In this essay, I merely provide one definition of marriage. My goal here is not to "prove" that this is marriage (though I offer some thoughts on each condition), nor is it to engage in a refined academic analysis of the question. I simply want to offer a relatively succinct statement of what marriage is, so that ordinary people who want to defend marriage have a clear baseline from which to understand and respond to developments in our society.

When we say we are "defining" marriage, we are not saying that we choose to view marriage as being such-and-such, that this is what we want marriage to be. Marriage is not a conventional arrangement that society defines for itself. It is "pre-political"--it has a nature that is independent of human desires, beyond the reach of human modification. While some aspects of marriage may vary in different times and places, nevertheless, there are certain "non-negotiables," without which marriage would not be an intelligible institution distinct from ordinary contracts.

What is marriage? Here's my rough and ready definition: Marriage is a formal social/legal bond constituting a union of life, and particularly an exclusive sexual union, established by free consent, between one man and one woman, for life, oriented essentially toward the procreation and education of children and a life of faithful mutual support.

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