At tonight's event, Marriage... Who's Allowed? Who Decides? a lot of time was spent on the history of the institution (or institutions) of marriage. One panelist claimed that because marriage "came before government" and "government should just recognize what marriage is by design" there should be a change in state or federal law to limit marriage to between a man and a woman. However, two other panelists gave many examples throughout history of different structures of quote-unquote marriage. There is a history of polygamy all around the world and also in early Christianity, for example.
How much does the position in favor of restricting marriage depend on a uniform history of the institution that needs protection or conservation? Isn't the basic idea simply that society needs to be "stable" in some sort of Rawlsian sense? Can't the advocate of restricting marriage argue that marriage between a man and a woman is the best environment for the raising of pro-social children?
But the next question, then, is: is that true?
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It would be inaccurate to claim that there is "a" history of marriage. Many stable partnership patterns along with socially acceptable exceptions have been documented by anthropologists. A 2004 statement posted by the American Anthropological Association (link here) summaries notable cases. It would be challenging to argue that all of these variations failed to produce "pro-social" children. My intuition is that growing up in a low-stress environment, partially conferred by some socially acceptable relationship between a child and her or his caretaker(s), would foster the development of "pro-social" children. Of course many other factors, both internal and external to households - particularly institutionalized education - figure prominently in this process.
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