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Many of the legally respected duties and privileges of family and marriage are a natural endowment of united procreation, and therefore precede and transcend state authority. Redefining marriage to include inherently non-conjugal unions assumes instead these marital duties and privileges are grants of the state to give to whomever the state pleases, and this will jeopardize the strength of the family unit in its contest with the state. The historically-recognized autonomy of the procreative unit may come to be seen as an invention of the state, to be modified or even rescinded at the pleasure of the state. In contrast, the conjugal understanding of marriage preserves the idea that the duties and privileges of marriage (such as autonomy in domestic affairs) philosophically precede the state.Share
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