Douglas Allen is a Canadian expert on the economics of social institutions. He has discussed same sex marriage from an economic point of view in articles in leading law journals. MercatorNet interviewed him about the consequences of legalising same sex marriage.

Q: You argue that marriage is an institution with its own norms which exists in many different legal systems. So what are the basic characteristics of marriage?

A: I think is important to think of marriage as an “institution” rather than some other metaphor. Perhaps the worst way to think about marriage is “as a contract.” A contract is a legally enforced agreement between two people, and although marriage contains this element, there is much more to marriage than this. An institution is a collection of expectations, norms, and humanly devised constraints that work together towards some social objective. Across cultures and time there are a number of basic institutional characteristics of marriage that are relatively constant.

These characteristics would include the following. First, there is a strong contractual element to marriage. Marriage almost always requires some degree of consent between the husband and wife. Even in arranged marriages, the individuals are almost always involved in some extent and often have veto powers. In modern marriages, the couple determine a number of the details of marriage. For example, how things are to be shared, produced, and monitored are matters left up to the couple.

Second, marriage always has involved third parties. Families are involved in marriages, but so are extended family members, non-blood relations, and third parties like the church, state, or tribe. These third parties often regulate the terms of entry into and exit from marriage. Here is where marriage starts to move beyond mere contract. Whereas contracts can be customized between two people, marriage regulations are common across couples. The meaning of marriage for one couple in British Columbia is the same for another couple. Every couple within a jurisdiction faces the same entry and exit conditions.

Among these third party regulations we see many similarities across time and space. Marriage has always been a life-long arrangement (although recently in Mexico City some politician suggested making marriage a matter of a renewable two-year contract). Marriage has, until very recently, been heterosexual. For the most part marriage has centered on monogamous relations, although there are many instances of polygamous ones. Marriage is always a sharing arrangement. Rather than one spouse “hiring” the other, couples form unions and share in the good and bad times.

Finally, marriage is the institution that all societies have used as their first choice in raising children.

These similarities do not mean that one cannot find exceptions. In the history of mankind all sorts of institutions have been used to regulate sex. What we know is that these isolated cases were unable to grow in numbers and wealth. As a result they either died out or quickly converted when contact was made with other civilizations. In addition, often events in life (such as death) have meant that second-best arrangements have had to be made to accommodate children. Hence, most societies have had to develop welfare systems around marriage that include multiple marriages, adoption, and the like.

Q: Is it possible to create laws which will accommodate both heterosexual and homosexual couples?

A: I think it is, but not without a cost. Let me first say that there are four major categories of costs and benefits of including any type of couple into marriage. There are costs and benefits of including, and there are costs and benefits of excluding. Most of the debate on gay marriage focus on just one or two of these categories, and as a result there is much confusion. Let me spell them out before answering your question:

Inclusion Benefits: These are the private benefits a couple gains from marriage, plus any social benefits. Most believe that the major social benefit of marriage is a sufficient quantity of high-quality children to perpetuate the society.

Inclusion Costs: Any type of couple that is included into marriage that requires a redefinition of marriage imposes a cost on the existing types of couples. Marriage has been designed for monogamous heterosexual couples. Any change to its institutional structure to accommodate others, must impose costs on the existing marriages. This is the argument of my paper in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

Exclusion Benefits: Every society has values that pass judgement on various types of unions. Some believe that polygamy is moral, others believe it is immoral. Some believe that gay marriage is good, others believe it is bad. When a type of marriage is excluded, those who believe this type of marriage is wrong benefit. These benefits must be included in the decision to allow the type of couple into the franchise of marriage.

Exclusion Costs: When a type of couple is excluded, the benefits they would have achieved in marriage are not realized, and this is a cost. In addition, some clerk somewhere has to be able to tell if a couple should be excluded, and this logistical problem also is a cost.

I have argued that the inclusion benefits of gay marriage are small because (i) there are very few of them in total, and (ii) they produce very few children. In a recent paper examining same sex couples in Canada, I find that gays and lesbians make up on 3/4 of 1 percent of the population, and that across the entire country there are only about 33,000 children living with a gay or lesbian in the household. There are 10 million children in Canada, and almost all of these children come from a previous heterosexual marriage or common law relationship.

I have argued that the inclusion costs of gay marriage are high. The institution of marriage must be fundamentally redefined to accommodate same sex couples. This includes, most notably, the definition of parenthood and the rights associated with that.

The exclusion benefits are changing every day, and this is why same sex marriage is now a debate. Whereas 30 years ago very few people would have considered same sex marriage a legitimate form of marriage, in North America around 50 percent now consider it so.

Finally, the costs of excluding same sex marriage is low. Society forgoes little by excluding them, and the logistics of identifying a same sex couple are low.

Hence, from an economic point of view, same sex marriage should not be allowed. The costs exceed the benefits. Now to your question.

The key element, in my opinion, is that the inclusion costs must be eliminated. Here is the major problem. By having one type of marriage for three different types of unions (and gays and lesbians are very different types of unions), we end up with major costs. If we could eliminate these costs, then same sex couples could enjoy the private benefits of marriage while only hurting those who think it is wrong.

The way to do this is through some type of civil union, or to have two types of marriage co-existing. The former has been tried. The latter has not. The problem with doing the latter is that it does open the door of “marriage as contract.” If same sex couples get to have a customized marriage, then why can other couples not also have customized marriages? If we go down this road, then marriage pretty much loses all meaning.

So, my answer would be: if we can create something called “same-sex marriage” that is not binding on heterosexuals, and which does not open the door for other custom marriages, then this is one way of accommodating everyone.

Q: How are heterosexual, gay and lesbian relationships essentially different?

A: Of course the fundamental difference between opposite and same sex unions is the ability of the former to cheaply procreate. In a recent paper I have examined this difference and found that it alters many behaviors. In particular, same-sex couples, given the higher costs of children, have fewer children. The costs of procreating are higher for gays than lesbians, and gays have many fewer children than lesbians. Because they have fewer children in their households, gays and lesbians partake in behaviors that are not complementary to children. They consume more alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes than heterosexuals. For both gay men and lesbians, they are more likely to have multiple sex partners, both as singles and couples.

Finally, because children are unlikely in a same-sex relationship, gays and lesbians sort on different criteria when seeking a mate. In particular, I find that they are less concerned about the genetic fitness of their partners. This makes sense since heterosexuals have to worry about the genetic traits their spouses will pass on to children, and they want a healthy spouse to be around for the entire duration of child rearing.

All of these factors help explain another factor that has been observed in same-sex unions: they are less stable than opposite-sexed ones. One study done in Norway and Sweden found that lesbians were six times more likely to divorce compared to heterosexuals, and gays were three times more likely to divorce.

It is not so much that children hold marriages together (which they probably do), but that those interested in children are also interested in long-lasting relations. The absence of children means that gays and lesbians are generally getting something out of their relationships that is different (eg, companionship). There’s no particular reason why one should have the same companion or sex partner for life once children are out of the picture.

Q: Do these differences have consequences?

A: They certainly do, as I’ve just pointed out. From an institutional perspective, they also mean that gays and lesbian relationships are likely to require different types of regulations. Even when children are present, they likely arrive by different channels. These different channels require different forms of management. As has become clear in the Netherlands, over time, there are now several different categories of parents with different levels of rights.

Q: How can changing the law to accommodate the demands of same-sex couples possibly harm heterosexual marriages?

A: Let’s take one example. Historically the definition of parent has been “natural parent” which has meant “biological parent.” There can only be two natural parents, and someone who is the biological parent has been given an entire set of rights and responsibilities. These rights and responsibilities have been designed to manage the problems that arise in procreation. Societies have wanted parents to have the proper incentives to remain married and to look after their offspring. It has always been a serious matter to alter these rights and responsibilities.

Well, natural parenthood makes no sense when you introduce same-sex marriage, because if there are children one of the spouses is not biologically connected. In jurisdictions that have same sex marriage there is always some type of redefinition to accommodate this. In Canada we created a concept called “legal parent.” In British Columbia this has meant a birth certificate asks for the mother’s name and the “co-parent’s” name. The concept of “father” has been reduced. More significantly, there can be more than two legal parents. There have been a host of legal cases involving divorce where biology has no standing and non-biological but legally-connected parents have been given custody. This is a dramatic shift in the rights of parents, and affects the way parents behave. The impacts of these are yet to be fully seen.

Q: What has been the experience in Canada, after the definition of marriage was changed?

A: Well, that is a good question. Most of the outrageous cases have not been held up by the courts. So, for example, when BC introduced same-sex marriage there were many couples from the US who came up and got married. They then went back home, and within a few years wanted a divorce. This put them in limbo. The states they resided in did not recognize their marriages, and so would not grant a divorce.

However, BC has a residency requirement and would also not grant the divorce. A lawsuit was launched demanding that BC allow divorces to non-residents. If passed it would have made BC a divorce mill. Fortunately, it was defeated, but this just shows yet another unintended consequence.

One immediate change was the subsequent change of all divorce laws. Of course, the meaning of marriage in the culture has changed. But, the measurable effects are not known yet, and unfortunately it will take some time before they are known.

Q: Many people say that adverse consequences of legalizing same-sex marriage are just social science scaremongering. But you argue that we should learn from the legalization of no-fault divorce.

A: Yes. This gets back to my fundamental point: marriage is an institution designed with a purpose. If you mess with it, there will be consequences.

During the no-fault divorce debate the same arguments were made that are heard today: “marriage is a formalization of love.” Hence, if a couple no longer loves each other, why shouldn’t they be allowed to divorce? The view was that there exists an exogenous number of dead and living marriages, and so the law was only setting free those trapped in a dead marriage.

Well, guess what? Marriage is designed to mitigate bad behavior, and by allowing individuals to unilaterally abandon their marital responsibilities there was a lot of bad behavior.

In the 1960s debate, no one thought the divorce rate would change, but it changed enormously and led to a divorce culture. No one thought there would be changes to labor force participation, hours worked, violence against spouses, suicide rates for children, and on and on. And yet, changes to these thing are linked to no-fault divorce.

The no-fault divorce experiment proves that marriage is an institution designed with a purpose, and therefore, further changes to accommodate same sex couples will also have consequences. As in the 1960s we’re probably unable to predict what they all will be, but they will come nonetheless.

One of the overriding purposes of marriage has been to encourage fertility. Every couple wants to have one baby, but not enough want to have enough to replace or grow a population. This has been a social problem for 3,000 years (ask the Spartans). Over the past 100 years we’ve been able to dodge this bullet through high levels of wealth and immigration, but as we continue to erode the value of marriage, reduced fertility is likely a long-term consequence.

Douglas W. Allen is Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, British Columbia. His latest book is The Institutional Revolution (U Chicago Press). He is also a member of the Ruth Institute’s Circle of Experts.

For Further Reading
Douglas W. Allen. “An Economic Assessment of Same-Sex Marriage Laws.” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Vol 29, No 3. 2006.
Douglas W. Allen. “Who Should Be Allowed Into the Marriage Franchise?” Drake Law Review. Vol 58, 2010.

Sandwiched between this year’s presidential proclamations in honor of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day was their antithesis, one celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month. In the former, the White House declared, respectively, that “[m]others are the rocks of our families and the foundation in our communities;” and “we honor the men in our lives who have helped shape us for the good, and we recommit to supporting fatherhood in our families, in our communities, and across our Nation.” In the latter announcement, the president proclaimed his desire to see that “all people can live with dignity and fairness under the law.”

At first glance, these three statements do not appear to be in conflict as long as “the law” is enforced. But during the same month, President Obama announced his administration’s intentions to “ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation” to complement his administration’s previous announcement to work toward eliminating the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) through executive orders and in the courts.

In the strongest letter of his brief tenure as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Archbishop Timothy Dolan called on President Obama and his administration to stop violating the law by actively lobbying against DOMA. The archbishop did not mince words, stating that the administration’s actions do not “stand the test of common sense,” and that unless rolled back, such actions would “precipitate a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions.” He further wrote that Obama needs to “push the reset button” on DOMA. To do otherwise, “ignores the will of millions of Americans who have voted in favor of state constitutional versions of the law.”

Shortly after Archbishop Dolan’s letter, the Obama administration immediately denounced a North Carolina ballot initiative for a Constitutional Amendment that would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. In doing so, the administration repeated its earlier statement that it would no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the courts.

This is not the only example of the Obama administration’s complete disregard for the law in order to push its LGBT agenda. In addition to the actions cited above, Dolan also called attention to a June report that the Department of Agriculture had created another “ism” – “heterosexism” – for those who support DOMA, and the lifting of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for the military.

And it is not only the Catholic Church that opposes the Obama administration’s overreaching in its push to redefine marriage. DOMA-like statutes currently exist in 39 states and 30 define marriage as between one man and one woman in their constitutions. Since 2004, 22 state constitutions have been amended to include this language by a popular vote of citizens. The six states, plus the District of Columbia, which have legalized homosexual “marriage” have done so through legislation or court order, not by the popular consent of the citizens of the state.

President Obama flagrantly disregards the will of the American people by not only ignoring the federal law that defines marriage as a union of one man and one woman, but also by openly opposing it. Can you imagine what would happen to a pro-life president who directed the appropriate agencies to ignore the law in order to withhold congressionally-approved funds to Planned Parenthood?

Like all who attempt to redefine marriage to suit an activist minority, the administration doesn’t appear to understand the important role natural marriage serves in securing the health of a nation. A recent study, “The Sustainable Demographic Dividend: What Does Marriage and Fertility have to do with the Economy?” focused on the marriage of one man and one women, the children resulting from that marriage, and the role of this natural family in sustaining economic growth. Its four key findings, cited from the executive summary, are:

(1) Children raised in intact, married families are more likely to acquire the human and social capital they need to become well-adjusted, productive workers.

(2) Men who get and stay married to one woman work harder, work smarter, and earn more money than their unmarried peers.

(3) Nations wishing to enjoy robust long-term economic growth and viable welfare states must maintain sustainable fertility rates of at least two children per woman.

(4) Key sectors of the modern economy—from household products to insurance to groceries—are more likely to profit when men and women marry and have children.

The “bottom-line message” of the report is that, “[B]usiness, government, civil society, and ordinary citizens would do well to strengthen the family—in part because the wealth of nations, and the performance of large sectors of the modern economy, is tied to the fortunes of the family.”

This is a direct contradiction to the actions taken by the Obama Administration with regard to the family. Its radical societal engineering will be felt by future generations as there will be fewer persons in the work force and consumers to generate the wealth that yields the taxes necessary to fund the government.

European nations are scrambling to halt the demographic decline that the Obama administration seems determined to foist upon America. Archbishop Dolan is correct. If not reversed, this action will most certainly harm our nation in ways that do not appear to have occurred to the President.

Words do have meanings, but actions speak louder than words. The Obama administration’s attempts to redefine marriage prove that its proclamations on Mother’s and Father’s Days ring hollow.

As Archbishop Dolan put it, it is long past time for the Obama administration to “push the reset button” on DOMA. The future of our nation depends on it.

Bob Laird is a fellow of HLI America, an educational initiative of Human Life International, and is the former Director of Tepeyac Family Center. He writes for the Truth and Charity Forum.

I don’t see the term “to be hoist with one’s own petard” used much these days, but I used to see it quite a bit a few decades back. It is another of those Shakespearean phrases that have woven themselves into the language. This one comes from the passage when Hamlet speaks of “the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petar,” in reference to how he turned the tables on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the messengers carrying the orders to have him killed. (A petar or petard was a bomb used to blow up an enemy’s defenses.) The expression became part of the vernacular as a way to describe someone who is harmed by his own plan to harm someone else. Well, that is what happened recently to the leftwing blog site The Huffington Post, even though its editors probably don’t realize it yet.

The Huffington Post was founded about ten years ago by Arianna Huffington to provide a leftwing alternative to the right-leaning Drudge Report. (I wonder if someone in her inner circle will someday describe why and how the quirky Arianna flip-flopped in the blink of an eye from conservative talking head to publisher of a left-wing blog site. She appears to be one of those pundits whose political beliefs are chosen in a career move.) Its editors collect articles, columns, and postings on political and cultural issues from a liberal point of view. The Church is a frequent target of their wrath, because of its stand on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and the sexual revolution in general. They like to feature members of the clergy who line up with the trendy leftists on the issues of the day.

That is why on Aug. 26 they published an article about the late Father Mychal Judge. They thought they could use him to bash the Church for its “repressive” views on sex and homosexuality. The Huffington Post headline read “Gay Catholic Icon.” The column was by Daniel Burke of the Religion News Service. It opens with a line about the “well-known image from the 9/11 attacks: five firefighters carrying a body from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. The body belonged to the Rev. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan fire chaplain who rushed to the burning buildings and was killed by falling debris. Later, a half-hidden secret emerged about the gallant priest: he was gay.”

Burke writes of how Fr. Fred Daley, the pastor of All Saints Church in Syrause, N.Y., has installed a statue of Judge “to signal its hospitality to gays and lesbians.” Burke observes that Daley, “came out as gay himself in 2004,” and believes that Judge can serve as a model for “gay young people” struggling “to fit into a church that considers homosexual desires an ‘intrinsic moral evil.’” Daley hopes that Judge’s life will “break so many stereotypes that people have.”

Was Judge gay? Entries from a biography published after Judge’s death make clear that he struggled with same-sex attractions. He wrote of “my gay self and how the people I meet never get to know me fully.” This has led homosexual activists to latch onto him as a symbol of their cause. One group has published a documentary called Saint of 9/11 that focuses on his homosexuality. Homosexual activists hold vigils on the anniversary of his death to energize opposition to the Church’s policies that bar men “with deep-seated homosexual tendencies from the priesthood.” Homosexual activist Andrew Sullivan argues that by the Church’s logic Judge “should never have been ordained.”

Sorry: Judge’s life illustrates no such thing. The Huffington Post entry notes that the NYC firefighters for whom Judge served as chaplain never knew of his same-sex attractions. It quotes Dennis Lynch, a lawyer who worked with Judge on bringing peace to Northern Ireland. Lynch denies that Judge was a homosexual and argues that “activists have hijacked the truth about him to advance a particular cause. I think the last thing Father Mike would want as his legacy would be for people to debate his sexual orientation. How come any time anyone talks about Mychal Judge they only want to talk about that subject?”

Precisely. Judge was not a homosexual activist when he was alive, and it is smarmy to make him one after his death. Who knows what Judge’s biography would have said about his same-sex attractions if it had been published while he was still alive. Whatever the nature of those attractions, there is no one who contends that Judge did not live a fully celibate life, including Fr. James Martin, culture editor of the Jesuit’s America magazine, also quoted in the Huffington Post. “He lived as the Catechism asked him to live and kept his ordination promises.” Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the Catholic bishops mad the same point: “One’s orientation should never dominate one’s ministry as a priest. Clearly, it did not dominate the ministry of Father Judge, who by all reports was held in high esteem by many, especially by the fire department he served so well.”

Fr. Martin and Sr. Walsh are underscoring the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. The Church has taught for centuries that a homosexual orientation is not sinful. Temptations are not sinful; it is only when we give in to them that we engage in objectively immoral actions. Judge understood that distinction. He kept his vows. Which means there is no reason to think he would not have been ordained by the Church today. When Rome uses the term “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” it is making the distinction between men like Judge and those who openly and unashamedly engage in the homosexual lifestyle and demand that the Church change its teachings to accommodate them in that choice. Judge did not do that. He did not preach that message. He remained faithful to the Church’s teachings.

We have to give Daniel Burke credit: his column on Judge was honest about how Judge lived his life. In doing so, it demonstrated how an individual with same-sex attractions can live a life of dignity and accomplishment, while remaining a devout and faithful Catholic. The Huffington Post headline writer described Judge as a “gay icon.” Burke’s column, intentionally or not, made a very different point.

(NEW YORK – C-FAM)  The European Parliament voted 349 to 218 today to condemn Lithuania for its “law on the protection of minors” which prohibits promotion of “homosexual, bisexual or polygamous relations” among children under 18 in the Baltic nation. Conservative critics contend that the measure, crafted in reaction to the domestic legislation of a sovereign member state pertaining to the family, oversteps the Parliament’s authority. 

The resolution directs the Agency for Fundamental Rights to opine on whether the law contravenes European anti-discrimination standards. Any such opinion would be non-binding, though activists would likely use it to press for greater recognition of rights based on “sexual orientation.”

An earlier proposal by the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), the “liberal” parliamentary faction, would have initiated proceedings to suspend Lithuania pursuant to article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, the 1992 pact that created the European Union (EU). Parliamentarians principally affiliated with the Christian Democratic grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), worked behind the scenes to soften the resolution and remove the Article 7 reference. 

While “progressive” parliamentarians lined up to charge Lithuania with promoting “homophobia,” several EPP and conservative members spoke in opposition to the measure and in support of the country’s sovereign right to pass laws protecting families and children, including Lithuania’s first post-Soviet head of state Vytautas Landsbergis and Slovak parliamentarian Anna Záborksá. 

Nevertheless, the EPP remained divided on the measure, with virtually every EPP member from France voting to censure Lithuania. Surprisingly, Malta’s delegation, including its two EPP representatives, voted as a bloc against Lithuania.

Lithuania’s Parliament, or Seimas, passed the child protection legislation in June. The President vetoed it, in apparent reaction to criticism from Western European politicians and homosexual advocacy organizations. In July, Lithuania’s parliament overrode the veto. The law is scheduled to take effect in March 2010. 

David Quinn, Director of Ireland’s Iona Institute and a family rights advocate, called the resolution “a completely unwarranted intrusion in the domestic affairs of a member state.” Critics such as Quinn see the non-discrimination principle, particularly with respect to sexual orientation, being used to trump long-enshrined values such as religious liberty and parental rights. Quinn called anti-discrimination “the skeleton key that opens every room of the house.” 

Some observers expect the Parliamentary action to have repercussions in Ireland, where the nation will vote in a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty next month. 

While the EU has “guaranteed” that Ireland’s constitutional protection of unborn life would be unaffected by a “yes” vote on Lisbon, the European Parliament’s action on Lithuania has fueled concerns among Irish euroskeptics that European institutions would seek to override the Republic’s domestic laws. Among other changes, the Lisbon Treaty would make the Charter of Fundamental Rights binding upon members. While silent on abortion, critics fear an activist European Court of Justice reading such a right into the charter. 

Forty-six parliamentarians abstained on the Lithuanian resolution, including three Irish EPP members. The four Irish ALDE members broke with their party and voted against the resolution, a move insiders see as tactical and intended to forestall criticism in advance of the Lisbon referendum.