happened. >> what role does the government play in a gay person's life? >> it plays a first of all, a very fundamental role. maybe i should start with

what it does do. if you are ace soldier you could get thrown out from the u.s. government your telephone tapped, you can be arrested strictly speaking for sexual relations in many states in this country for just having a relationship which can be involved sexual activity the government could even go into someone's better and arrest them and it would be constitutional to do so. those are the pro-active acts the government of the united states or other countries the only people it picks out to say we will actually actively make your life hard are the gay

people. the only minority it to them that applies but then would it doesn't do in this is really where facebook climaxes, it does not allow you to have your emotional relationships publicly accepted. and when you say that to people they think it is not such a big deal. you have some freedom you can do you want it is not like we live in a police state and we don't by and large. i don't think that we do. but with the average heterosexual you can get married. you can have a relationship, no marriage, you have kids that they are not legitimate. and your family is a lot

except this and you cannot have health benefits if you're the immigrant you cannot marry or stay in the country and then of those things apply and when you grow up in the average person growing up around adolescence you fall in love, you get a crash to fumble through adolescence, you go on dates it is so much a part of people's lives. and society is sending messages and rightly but who you love in your life who we spend your life with? is probably the most important thing in your life and the government says to me none of that is possible for you. you are not good enough.

those feelings you are having -- having is disgusting. you can never marry the person that you love and we will never accept to. and when your toe over 13 and told that and you know, who you are, and i think most 12 or 13 year-old spattered gay or lesbian know that, that is incredibly powerful message to send to someone. you don't know where to go or he will be. every gay person is born into a straight family. our models are the parents, brothers, and sister, we want to have our

love reciprocated. i am not saying it is easy. not first-rate people either , but deep down we are told that we will never ever ever be allowed so did builds from the very beginning, a sense of credible loneliness and depression, sometimes self discussed and sometimes desperation and if you analyze as some people have done with teenage suicide you will find a very large number have to do with this incredible despair. any gay person and says they did not feel it is not telling the truth. i have been called the self hating homosexual for admitting this but it is true it takes a long time for most people to get

beyond this. remember, it is not just strangers who'd tell you this but the people you love the most. in my case, and no one came along and said to me, if you are homosexual, you are disgusting and nothing will happen. but the truth is they never said anything. but i knew this. and occasionally you hear bits and pieces and realize it is terrible. this is so bad nobody would even talk about it. so i think the government ban on marriage coulter stand on culturally culturally, socially, psycho logically and permeates everything about the integrity of your love.

and until that is changed changed, nothing about the real integrity or quality of a people will change. which is why i am the assistant that it is a thing that i keep coming back to. in the book of what i have written before and what might argue. >>c-span: what is different about the way the state of hawaii treats gays? >> it is in limbo right now. is essentially, what is happening it has complicated the legal process going through a trial -- a trial and an appeal based on the case in which gay people have essentially argued that the denial of the marriage license to the same-sex

couple is unconstitutional under the hawaii constitution. this has temporarily been upheld pending the process. strangely and interestingly, the legislature has not acted that aggressively, at all at this point, to stop this possible illegality. the argument is interesting. it is not about gay people but it is about sex discrimination. which is a brilliantly ingenious argument. the b-2 ingenious to work in the long run. but if meggett and elizabeth want to get married and they are denied they are denied because make is a woman and not a man. a she is being discriminated on the basis of her sex.

in the other argument that is brought to bear is the wonderfully named case in virginia. which of course, is the classic interracial marriage case which someone was discriminated against in marriage because they were black and not white or white and not black. of those analogies could be understood especially with interracial, then of course, i think we could have quite a remarkable discussion. i hope this will lead to a ruling that we do have it. but even if it does happen in hawaii there will be a phenomenal today across the country about what this means because the full faith and credit clause requires other states may be forced to address this whether they

recognize it or not. but i must say that i believe it follows inevitably, that if you believe a homosexual person is emotionally as dignified as a heterosexual person to come within the bay and from them varying is a gross violation of civil rights as a ban on interracial marriage. that my life is as good as yours and love is as good as a heterosexual love, the germ of the notion that colonel it is implicit in

the promise of america just as interracial marriage was implicit. i have to believe that will happen because like an immigrant does believe in america, it may not happen in the next five years but i think it will happen in the next 50. >> this proposal is not a way to avoid the claim that gay and lesbian couples deserved quality, they do. from the civil rights perspective, marriage is a good fight but from a family

policy perspective marriages the wrong fight to gay-rights activists should not look at the elimination of specific korn to achieve marriage equality because those affect a wide range of families in relationships of both gay and straight people , all of the doom and share an interest to reform the outdated laws. if this book is a road map how to get the laws that we need and want now, whether we achieve marriage or not. is a road map for protecting our relationships with children to pressure family and medical leave, assuring economic security after the death of an economic provider to make sure the person we choose makes medical decisions for us if we are unable to make them for ourselves.

marriage should not be the dividing line between the relationships that count in the relationships that don't and in fact,, over the course of the last several decades, the legal significance of marriage has changed dramatically so what i am advocating in this book is not so much a rigid break from how things have always been done but rather an extension of changes that have already been made in our legal system. and i will just give a little bit of a condensed analysis of what has changed. to do that i have to ask you to channel yourself back 40 years and imagine it is february, 1968 instead of february 2008.

this is what the law of marriage looks like, 40 years ago. there were legally mandated separate spheres for husbands and wives. the husband and wife have very distinct legal rules that the law condoned and in fact,, mandated. it was very difficult to end a marriage. somebody had to be guilty of a marital faults, and somebody else had to be innocent somebody else wanted the divorce or there would not be one. and the grounds were very limited. in addition, children born outside of marriage were not only social outcast but illegal outcast suffering very severe legal disabilities.

none of those characteristics apply today. but they had applied for centuries looking back from 1968. but within a decade of that time, a completely revised set of laws were on the books. making gender equality the norm for men and women in marriage, a facilitating no-fault divorce and every state so that now either party can obtain a divorce for no reason other than one team the marriage to end and to eliminating the legal distinctions between children born inside of marriage and outside of marriage. these discarded the gender script made the entry into marriage more optional and exit from marriage more

ordinary. we take this state of affairs for granted. but they did not come without some fuss. >> the official topic today is should conservatives support same-sex marriage? the unofficial subtitle is everything i know about gay marriage i learned at the american enterprise institute. [laughter] too many people on their rights are panicking instead of thinking when it comes to same-sex marriage. the president of the united states is someone i put in that category but it seems

to me if you apply the kinds of principles that i think that i learned here as a.e.i. and people that chris has done for to proselytize but if thank you reach to conclusions. the first is that same-sex marriage is an idea that conservatives ought to like. second, even if you don't agree with the first a total national day and that the president among the others are advocating is an approach that conservatives should dislike. the book is largely about and the reason why same-sex marriages of these trifecta of a melon -- modern america policy good for gazing communities around them to save the straight world and good for marriage. because that is most of what we will be discussing in the panel i will give you two months worth.

gay people of course, a gay couples get the legal protections of marriage if it is enacted but that is hardly the most of its. they also get a richer love, as a destination whether you ultimately gets the first kiss, a pate, going steady to end in love than they get the enormous personal benefits that marriage alone conveys that married people are healthier and prosperous and more secure less drugs, less crime, less instability and the even live longer. that is all citizens ought to have access and will benefit from integration into the culture of marriage. the straight world gets the additional stability when you have people into family which is what marriage uniquely does. i have a cousin right now six years old married in suffering from cancer and

her husband is keeping her alive. not just physically but emotionally. if he was not there, a charity, welfare, the kids do their best there is no substitute for the love and care of a fat -- spouse but nobody can reasonably say that ociety has a stake in the marriage. above all it is a likely beneficiary of same-sex marriage. this is an opportunity to bolster the ethic of arriage at a time when as been abandoning those things. the fundamental principle ought to be for all of society that sex, love, marriage, go together automatically. that this is the preferred form of commitment if you are a straight family with kids you want to see them model the behavior of marriage that is good for your kids and their kids by

the way. this is a rare opportunity not to go down the slippery slope of back up to marriage at a time and heterosexuals are increasingly treating marriage as optional. the problem today that is not a threat to marriage is those not wanting to do gets married. same-sex marriage is a dramatic statement not cohabitation, not the gold standard or the model that all americans should aspire that it is everyone can expect to do it and everybody should be expected to do it. but it is a noble thing to do. here is a point conservatives can understand , there are a lot of trades in society that is

a win-win as in international trade in most forms of voluntary exchange exchange, this in my opinion is they would win but to be a loser is wrong. but late may be wrong about that. and of course, they're often externalities' forbade side effects so for the rest of this taco with like to talk more specifically about what i think i learned at a.e.i. how conservatives should think and apply it to this issue. we live as a naked conservative knows come in a very uncertain world, we lack a lot of information, we live in the world of unintended consequences. the wisest person or committee in the world cannot get anything -- everything right but had we make policy in that situation? modern conservatism with

those white chris has developed principles how you make policy and decisions. i will name three of them. principle number one, every individual counts. favor a policy that never loses sight of the individuals at the bottom. that doesn't mean only individual welfare but that simply sees individuals as the means to an end. conservatives as she would not confiscate some income for the common good how many of you wooded give up?

how many would give up your marriage to make your first -- family stronger? and how many would give up the opportunity to get married to make somebody else's strong there? maggie gallagher has written as follows, will same-sex marriage strengthen or weaken marriage as a social institution. if the answer is it would weaken it up all we should not do a. what is this -- missing with 10 or 15 billion homosexual americans that renault -- now locked out of marriage makes to wealthier in happier than growing up without the hope of prospecting near future is a severe hardship.

so to balance against benefits i do not deny that but in those who do things good for themselves and bad for society but but the way to look at it that is all too common cannot be the correct answer or a cannot be right that all the good in the world done for 15 million gave people does not counted all against any harm that might happen to the non gay people. the second principle is respect market forces. so how many times have liberals mistake to the deep? campaign finance regulation comment then control, energy price control, it does not

stop change but distorts the channel through which it runs and just saying that you want to make something scarce or less of a? this same thing applies to same-sex marriage but with a social market forces with their social lives. and they simply cannot be stopped. the same-sex couples are here for good there will not go away and hide as the slogan said we are here, we are clear, get used to a. recognition into any vehicle they flow. society has an interest to

recognize the nobility of the commitment these couples are making and a ban will not stop recognition from flowing to these couples. but what it will do is shut marriage out of a new market and say this new market can have anything except marriage and of course, when the demand cannot be met by marriage, it will be met by something else. what else would that be? and assuming you cannot stop change, that leads to the third principle that i learned at the american enterprise institute, that is managed risk rationally. suppose somebody says welfare reform or education vouchers or a dangerous idea

so dangerous they should never ever be tried? that is what is known is the extreme version of the precautionary principle these days heard primarily on the left, not the right in the context of biotech where people say it should not be allowed at all until they can be proven 100 percent safe. of course, modern conservatives understand the precautionary principle is radical only looking at the risk of one side of the equation and not of biotechnology from coming to the market. it is very important to recognize there are risks on both sides of the equation. but if there is a significant downside potential something it has

not come to grips with. and planning this -- a subsidy to marriage civil unions or domestic partnerships, those other legally and socially sanctioned and offer a halfway house between the non marriage in marriage. then in the cases how they offer the benefits about responsibilities or rise without obligations. many politics being what they are if not immediately but overtime with a domestic partner program corporatcorporat e of state and local the majority of those to opposite sex couples even if these

alternatives are not open to heterosexuals the insistence will validate the impression it is just a relationship one of the things you can do if you are in a committed partnership. refusing even the civil unions programs no civil marriage or no nothing is even worse because the vessel into which date commitment will flow will be cohabitation every successful gay couple will be an advertisement for the joys of life out of wedlock wedlock, and naturally, legal structures and there is nothing that can possibly prevent street people from cohabitating. why would conservatives want to turn them into cohabitation couples? not a good idea. . .

>> david, let me ask you a question. it's often said by those who oppose same-sex marriage that it would, and this is a fairly common phrase, threaten marriage as an institution. and i think that's what you're suggesting in your introductory statement. what does that mean? in other words, how does it threaten marriage? and i agree with you that i think marriage got it is an institution that is not in great

shape in america. we have a growing number of unmarried couples who choose not to get married. many of whom have children. why does the authorization of same-sex marriage threatened that institution? >> number one, because it requires us as we heard from evan to redefine what marriage is. it takes, it would require us to say that marriage is no longer what we have known it to be but is instead what evan calls a specific commitment of love, specific commitment of love to another person. in other words, the redefinition is that now to people who have the commitment to one another, that's what marriage is. and all of the public authority and the institutional meaning that has surrounded marriages in

the institution get to find a way, and instead which is have private relationships between people. and so that is one of the ways that, and also it wouldn't just be for gay and lesbian couples because the requirement, the demand is to change the meaning for everyone. second lien it would explicitly sever the link between children and marriage. we don't have a procreation license, all very clever but the point behind it is not funny at all. the point behind is the court's argument to say that oh, yeah, right wingers and homophobes, they all used to save some american and children went together, but not anymore. now we don't have her creation licenses. what this tells me as someone

who studied marriage for 20 years is that the basic concept of marriage which is to bring together the male and enough to make the next generation to make sure that they will be there to raise that generation. that's what's being kind of laughed at and put down and sneered at and say no, that's no longer it. that is, that definition would not just be for some people. that's for everyone. in canada when they passed gay marriage they struck the term natural pair from canadian law and replaced it with the term legal parent. so a legal parent is just i guess, well, it's unclear what that really means. but these historic gift of the marriage institution, evans demand is that we specifically disavow it. we back away from the. it. not just for some couples but for all couples.

and so what happens when you change the name of an institution? look, one little example but if we said we pass a law that said that from now on ballet meant dancing and that it could mean jazz dancing, it could mean the twist. it could mean disco, but from now on ballet means dancing, and anybody who says anything different want to talk about pair wets or something, it's inappropriate, it's defensive, -- offensive. it's a bigoted thing to do. you can't say anymore. instead ballet means dancing. what would happen? has been has said we have gay marriage in massachusetts and it hasn't fall in the ocean yet. that's true. if we changed the name of ballet, redefined ballet to mean dancing, with the new york ballet company disbanded the

next a? day? no. what people forget overnight that are used to be something on ballet? no. but over time there would be a significant change in the public understanding of what the word ballet means. the same thing is going to happen to marriage if this campaign is successful and we redefine it as a private relationship. it has no public imagine that anybody can specify. it is specifically not connected to children. if we do that, it's not just, you know, x number of children who are at risk. it's all children because the definition, this redefinition will apply to everyone. when you change the meaning definition of an institution, you change the rules that affects people's behavior and you change the way that people in these institutions behave. this seems to me fairly obvious.

evans said it's just letting more people into the institution of marriage. incorrect. it's changing the institution of marriage for everyone. sorry. >> that was a long statement. i think i should let evan comment. >> i do have a response to both parts of it. the quote unquote definition and the change thing, particularly with regard to kids. first of all, there was a time in the united states went to give one example among many, when women were not allowed to be loaded. that was considered to be the most natural right thing in the world. lawyers had to be mean but that was the way god intended it. it was the way nature intended it and it was the way the law and body day. it was defended by academics, scholars and religious leaders and politicians up and down. it even went down to the supreme court and the supreme court said women cannot be loaded. but when we changed that and

allowed women to be lawyers, the law did not collapse. the bar did not collapse. the profession of law did not collapse. and you know what? we didn't even come up with a different word for lawyer. we came to understand that people have been formally excluded from the institution and opportunity and responsibility were, in fact, qualified and able to perform and enter into it to the benefit of everybody. so i am not advocating that we, david blankenhorn would say change the definition or take something away, anything. what i'm saying is that there are committee people who are living their lives performing the work of marriage in their private lives, but they're being denied that public commitment that is called marriage. and contrary to what david is saying, i understand that marriage as a public dimension as well as a private. it's precisely because it has a

public dimension that it is wrong for our government to discriminate and perpetuate exclusion from the legal institution which is what is at issue here today. on the other point, the point related to children, david talked a bit, there's this campaign underway now and i can tell whether he's complimenting me or consulting me by saying somehow i am part of this campaign that if successful is going to decouple marriage from children which conjures up these image of fear and some of it will take away your children, or prevent you from having children, or undermine the well being of your children. when, in fact, there's no campaign underway whatsoever. and to the extent that we and the law have decoupled marriage from children, that change happened decades ago. there is no procreation requirement for people who are -- thank you. there is procreation partner for

marriage. that's not what marriage is a matter of law. if you don't believe me, ask rudy giuliani and his current wife. ask newt gingrich and his current wife. ask bob and elizabeth dole. ask pat and shelley buchanan. go back and ask george and martha washington. all these people were married, married under the law, entitled to respect for their marriage is, no laughing matter, precisely because we know that in the law many people do want to raise their children within marriage, and also many people marry without regard to whether or not they have children or any attempt or ability to do so. but the procreation requirement is somehow only invoked when it comes to excluding gay couples from marriage. and as if that were not unfair enough, what makes it even worse

is that many of those a couples, the same-sex couples, throughout unit states including new york are raising children. and they want into this legal institution of marriage for precisely the reason that many other non-gay people want to get married, too. which is not only with regard to their emotional well being and reinforcing their private commitment with a public commitment, and having that commitment honored with legal and tangible and intangible rights and responsibilities, but also because they believe that it will strengthen their families and help their children. there are millions of children being raised by same-sex couples, i gay and lesbian parents, throughout the country. there are thousands and thousands right here in this state. they want marriage for the same mix of reasons as our non-gay

brothers and sisters do. and among those reasons are that marriage does offer something valuable in the eyes of many, including david blankenhorn, for those who are raising children, and for their kids. and it makes no sense to exclude those couples and their kids from this legal institution. >> up next, a portion of a talk delivered by william eskridge about his book "dishonorable passions." >> i want to talk about three connections of lessons that the book bears for the same-sex marriage debate. and effect i told the publisher and i don't know if the publisher will get this message up until the publisher one where you should sell the book is that you can keep it understand the same-sex marriage debate, the underlying social tropes without reading this book about the

decline of sodomy laws in there. three points, it seems to me, the first point is the relationship of law and culture are i'm a law professor, most in the audience are lawyers practicing lawyers or legal administrators. and yet one of the lessons of the book is not the autonomy of law or even the greatness of law. but the lawrence case was not driven dependent by either the and make us prefer even the actual briefed on the marriage. and serving not by the work of those. the argument of the book is that the rise of sodomy laws and the huge number of arrests in the middle part of the 20th century and then the decline of sodomy laws in the money their demise are less driven by the development of the law and more driven by developments in culture identity politics and ordinary politics.

and here is the basic tapestry that i laid out in the book. the basic tapestry in the book is that americans are the sex obsessed and six negative. america is very sex judgmental, remains sex judgment and it's been that way all throughout its history. the judgments made about sexual and gender variation in the 20th century were that any kind of sexual and gender variation outside of procreative marriage between one man and one woman was evil, to be demonized, and was literally illegal for the entire 19th century and for most of the 20th century. so the malignancy of sexual variation, which a change in the 20th century, but it changed in a way that we can do they appreciate but not admire but it changed away from demonizing intercourse outside of marriage implicit in the demonizing homosexual intercourse outside of marriage, away from heterosexual extramarital activity toward homosexual

activity, by definition of course, also outside of marriage by definition of course, also not procreative in its own right. so from sexual minorities generally being outlawed it became only homosexual minorities who are outlaws in the last third of the 20th century. that is much of a story that the book tells the tells the story of how these outlaws and the mainstream allies were able to persuade much of america that a lot of sexual gender variation is tolerable and not malignant. that people who are sexual gender minority should not be percy outlaws for the state. this process began after world war ii, begin with mainstream voters interesting enough, begin in gay and lesbian bars but it began with political movements that culminated, started in 1961 with illinois repeal but

achieved its greatest victory in the early days anyway by the repeal in california. and by its partial invalidation in massachusetts. massachusetts and california with the great pioneers of in sodomy reform. the rendering legal consensual features of sodomy between private individuals within their own home. unfortunately, or perhaps for my book fortunately, the story doesn't end in 1975 with the great california repealed the story i tell them great detail in the nearby willie brown and a number of other important and very admirable straight allies. because very soon after the california repealed, the traditional family value movement that we've come to appreciate really was born in full force. it's caricatured as a reaction to rural -- to roe v. wade but it's only a small part of the story of the revival of traditional and mores in the united states. much of the traditionalist revival was fueled by a no

promotion to homosexuality idea. that homosexuality was yes, still malignant. the reform should not take place and that in anything any kind of movement to render gay people anything less than outlaws would be an incredible emotion of homosexuality. this rhetoric gained a lot of steam ironically in the 1980s, the very point when hours versus hardwick was being litigated with the aids epidemic which was associated with homosexuality generally, and gay men in particular. most interesting parts of the book, the period after 86 when gay-rights rebounded in fact more strongly than ever, not just inspite but i argue because of powers. lawyers of all sorts including

myself came out of the closets only after bowers versus hardwick declared everybody potentially and all. the state cannot declare all gender and sexual variation to be a malignant enemy of the state and must provide some degree of tolerance. so the new norm is what i called paula will sexual variation. the supreme court has left the states a great deal of leeway to prefer heterosexuality, is not an entirely equally playing field as demanded by the u.s. supreme court ther. but indeed part of my argument in the book is this now prepares the way for the marriage litigation, which is successful

as it so far has been in states like california and massachusetts, would be a movement away from even a tolerable variation so the notion that sexual and gender variation, at least much of it, is benign. and people who are sexual and gender minorities should be treated with exactly the same dignity and respect as the heterosexual minority as. so that's the first kind of story. and, indeed, part of my argument is the same-sex marriage movement which still accurate describes to the legislation produced a terrible backlash, actually paved the way for sodomy law victory. my argument there is that in part as for state and lesbian families became more prominent through the same-sex marriage litigation and the publicity about lesbians and gays facing children, forming committed unions, seeking rights to marry or civil unions as it was when

called, that in the public mind even if it was not willing to recognize these unions as marriages, the public mind was beginning to think well, no longer should we consider gays and lesbians to be sexual outlaws and instead we now start thinking about gays and lesbians as potential partners, potential parents, potential relatives or in-laws which the supreme court in 1986 was literally unable to conceive of intellectually or emotionally. and i think that was the big change between 1986-2003 previous supreme court literally in 2003, even the dissenters, were capable of understanding gays and lesbians as ordinary citizens can and citizens with relationships, and citizens who were parents, in-laws, relatives, neighbors, teachers and so on. here's the second lesson that i draw from the book that is for better or for worse very much

relevant to the same-sex marriage litigation. and that is the change in america is incremental. change does not come through radical bounds. stonewall, which was a great moment for gay and lesbian rights in 1969, did not produce legal change but indeed it produced a lot of legal change and a lot of social and legal backlash as we now know. so here are some of the lessons that i derived from the sodomy campaign that they are very much relevant to the marriage campaign. the first lesson is that it's going to take decades and not years for a social movement to persuade mainstream america of the justice of its right. the civil rights movement took decades to move to a very uncertain place which is where we are today, a place of progress but it's a place of incomplete progress. anthe women's rights movement which, of course, goes back 150

years and have been very active from the period of the 1960s to the present, has made enormous progress both culturally and legally. yet still very incomplete progress in terms of equity in pay for women, equity in respect, and so on. so the period of gay rights and gay litigation which has been particularly this period about a generation from 1969-2003, this generation has produced the sodomy law reform. that is now victorious. the country is not going to retreat on that. it is a form that was delivered only after generational shift and that's what is significant. that's what we're seeing again and we will see in the marriage litigation and the marriage movement. is that the generation that was in command, the george h. w. bush generation in command in the period after world war ii was not a generation on the whole that was going to deliver

the criminal section of sodomy. it was george w. bush and bill clinton and willie brown and a number of other esteemed leaders, it's that generation, the generation of anthony kennedy, the generation of davidson, the generation of with the gator -- ruth bader ginsburg tickets that generation that delivered sodomy form in america. and we'll see the same thing in same-sex marriage. him in that case the generation of ruth bader ginsburg and my generation are not going to deliver marriage reform, at least for the country. maybe for california, certain for massachusetts but not for the country. instead it's going to be the generation that follows us, that when they take power will deliver either same-sex marriage or universal civil unions, or some other alternative w weekend ill conceived at this point.

>> we end this collection of programming on same-sex marriage with gene robinson come in 2012 he present his book "god believes in love: straight talk about gay marriage" to an audience in cambridge, massachusetts. >> i want to be honest about the fact that "god believes in love," the straight part is both meaning straightforward but also i really did have heterosexual people in mind when i wrote it. marriage is one of those things that is under siege and again i think the lgbt community has become the whipping boy for marriages troubles which, by the way, we are -- were here long before we ever start talking about gay marriage. marriage is under siege, at least in my experience come in

my counseling a sprint and that of my clergy and so on. the financial state of things in this country right now is the greatest threat to marriages. and you've got people trying to hold down two or three jobs to make ends meet and it doesn't leave a lot of time for nurturing a relationship in the marriage is under attack, that's for sure, but i want to be honest about one thing. i think we need to become in some people really are, critiquing marriage. the argument i'm making in this blog is, is really quite conservative argument. and my attitude is, give us marriage and then we will critique it. but give us the access to it, the right to it. and so this is not the book to critique the institution of marriage, although there is

quite a bit of that in it. it's the conservative argument about marriage as, at its best and at its ideals which speaks the kind of relationship in which two people make a place in the heart for one another come in such a profound way that it actually reveals to us the kind of selfless love that god has for us. the sacrament is a place where god promises to show up, right? and is in a relationship with another person there are times no matter how fleeting that you actually do love this person more than you love yourself, it gives you some tiny window into on the heart of god, who loves us beyond anything we can imagine. and i think that's why we value it. it's a laboratory for

understanding the transformative power of that kind of love. so at the end of the day it's the conservative argument, and one that conservatives ought to be all for. after all, how long have you criticized as for having promiscuous sex and superficial relationships? here we are trying to add some form in depth and continuity and so on, and they are against that, too. it's like the people who are opposed to abortion but also opposed to sex education and contraception. it doesn't make any sense. but i thought i should give you a heads up. [laughter] lastly, they will open it up for questions. i also think that the fear and resistance that we experience in this movement signals something

even bigger, and that is i really do believe that the lgbt movement is the beginning, just the beginning, of the end of patriarchy. and patriarchy has been around as you well know for a very long time, and benefiting him certain ones, especially if we're like western educated men. and i think the lgbt movement, i would be interested to hear from some of you in women's studies and so on. i think the lgbt movement raises the issue of patriarchy in a way that is different than the way the women's movement has raised the issue. and because we have benefited from it for so long, because it has been in place for so long, i think there is, there should be

no surprise that the resistance to us in this movement has been and will continue to be so fierce. and let's remember that when we settled the marriage equality thing, when we get full and equal rights for lgbt people, when there are protections in place, when liberty and justice for all actually means i'll, there will still be work to do. i mean, just because we have a jim crow laws -- jim crow laws on the book in the 60 didn't mean racism went away. just because it was funny for women sports gaming sexism went away. and when we get marriage equality or the end of doma will still be lots of work to do. we have to be in this for the long haul. >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers to watch videos and get up-to-date

information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> [inaudible] the first is the humanity project by jean thompson. it's a novel about a philanthropist who start writing big checks in order to do virtuous things. another book on my list is a book about how we need. [inaudible] and the last book on my list is --

>> let us know what you reading this summer. tweet us at the booktv. posted on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> up next on booktv, "after words" with guest host neela banerjee, energy and environment reporter for the "los angeles times." this week award-winning journalist laurence leamer and his latest book, "the price of justice: a true story of greed and corruption." in it, the new york times best selling author tells the story of the legal battle to hold massey energy accountable to the west virginia communities that it dominated while supplying almost half the nation's coal-generated electric power. the program is about one hour. >> host: