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Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity
Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity is a rousing, compelling defense of traditional, natural marriage. Here, Anthony Esolen—professor at Providence College and a prolific writer uses moral, theological, and cultural arguments to defend this holy and ancient institution, bedrock of society—and to illuminate the threats it faces from modern revolutions in law, public policy, and sexual morality.
Inside, discover:
- Traditional marriage’s roots in age-old religious, cultural, and natural laws
- Why gay marriage is a metaphysical impossibility
- How acceptance and legal sanction of gay marriage threatens the family
- How the state becomes a religion when it attempts to elevate gay marriage, and enshrine as a civil right all consensual sex
- How divorce and sexual license have brought marriage to the brink
- How today’s culture has impoverished and emptied love of its true meaning
In Defending Marriage Esolen expertly and succinctly identifies the cultural dangers of gay marriage and the Sexual Revolution which paved its way. He offers a stirring defense of true marriage, the family, culture, and love—and provides the compelling arguments that will return us to sanity, and out of our current morass.
175 pages, Paperback
Published April 16, 2014
16 people are currently reading
660 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Esolen
60 books483 followersAnthony Esolen is the author of over twenty-five books and over 1,000 articles in both scholarly and general interest journals. A senior editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, Esolen is known for his elegant essays on the faith and for his clear social commentaries. His articles appear regularly in Touchstone, Crisis, First Things, Public Discourse, The Catholic Thing, Chronicles, Inside the Vatican, and Magnificat, among others. An accomplished poet in his own right, Esolen is known for his widely acclaimed three-volume verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Modern Library). His Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child has been described as "a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man." And its sequel, Life Under Compulsion, has been called "essential reading for parents, educators, and anyone who is concerned to rescue children from the tedious and vacuous thing childhood has become." His recent books of social commentary include Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and the forthcoming, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends upon the Strength of Men.
Anthony Esolen has been writing his own poetry for decades, but until recently most of his published poetry has appeared in his verse translations of the great poets, Dante, Tasso, and Lucretius. More than a hundred of his own poems have appeared in such venues as Fine Madness, The Plains Poetry Journal, and Modern Age. After studying and teaching great poetry for nearly thirty years, Professor Esolen set out to write a book-length unified poem of his own, a project which he hopes will show that serious and significant long poetic works can still be written in our time. The result of his effort is The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, a book-length single poem composed of 100 parts -- short lyrics, dramatic monologues, and hymns -- centered on the life of Christ. He is working now on a second such long poem, The Twelve-Gated City, a collection of 144 interrelated poems centered on the parable of the prodigal son.
The grandson of Italian immigrants to America, Anthony Esolen was born and raised in the coal-mining country of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, and his Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Fellow. He is the 2020 recipient of the CIRCE Institute's Russel Kirk Prize, awarded each year to a writer and scholar "in honor of a lifetime dedicated to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue." He is writer-in-residence at Magdalen College in Warner, NH.
For more from the mind and pen of Anthony Esolen, visit his online magazine called Word and Song, at https://anthonyesolen.substack.com
Anthony Esolen has been writing his own poetry for decades, but until recently most of his published poetry has appeared in his verse translations of the great poets, Dante, Tasso, and Lucretius. More than a hundred of his own poems have appeared in such venues as Fine Madness, The Plains Poetry Journal, and Modern Age. After studying and teaching great poetry for nearly thirty years, Professor Esolen set out to write a book-length unified poem of his own, a project which he hopes will show that serious and significant long poetic works can still be written in our time. The result of his effort is The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord, a book-length single poem composed of 100 parts -- short lyrics, dramatic monologues, and hymns -- centered on the life of Christ. He is working now on a second such long poem, The Twelve-Gated City, a collection of 144 interrelated poems centered on the parable of the prodigal son.
The grandson of Italian immigrants to America, Anthony Esolen was born and raised in the coal-mining country of Northeastern Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, and his Ph. D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Fellow. He is the 2020 recipient of the CIRCE Institute's Russel Kirk Prize, awarded each year to a writer and scholar "in honor of a lifetime dedicated to the cultivation of wisdom and virtue." He is writer-in-residence at Magdalen College in Warner, NH.
For more from the mind and pen of Anthony Esolen, visit his online magazine called Word and Song, at https://anthonyesolen.substack.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
October 7, 2015
One of the most wholesome books I have read in a long time.
I had the privilege a few weeks ago of speaking together with Anthony Esolen at the Illinois Family Institute. His talk was fantastic — he has the kind of subtlety that is vigorous, lively, understandable, and brave. He is not like that scribesnpharisees seminar prof doing nuance to beat the band, watching his own hand as it languidly gestures toward the mahogany wainscot, the wainscot that, incidentally, was bought and paid for by some evangelical donor a hundred and fifty years ago. No — to lurch wildly to a different metaphor — his subtlety is the kind that a fencing master shows just before your foil flies across the room, and you find yourself rubbing your wrist.Defending Marriage
While I was there in Chicago, I picked up this book of his, Defending Marriage, one that I did not have, and am pleased to mention it to you all as my next book of the month. It is simply magnificent. This robust defense of marriage as marriage is, I think, the best thing to pick up if you want to defend marriage against its barbarian critics, or simply if you want to stirred up to love and good works in your own marriage. Fantastico. Arresting. Superb. Smashing. Did I mention that I like it?
On the subject of marriage, not only has secularism kidnapped us all, duck-taped our hands and feet, and thrown us into the trunk of their car, as we are going down the road it slowly dawns on us that we are in the trunk of a clown car escaping from the circus.
The subtitle is “Twelve Arguments for Sanity.” Each chapter tackles a different argument — on why we must not give the sexual revolution the force of irrevocable law, why we must not grant that sexual gratification is a personal matter only, why we should not give godlike powers to the state, and so on.
This book is instructive, helpful, and invigorating. It is moving. It is everything a book on marriage needs to be — political, cultural, spiritual, and personal. In fact, I can’t believe you don’t have it yet.
I had the privilege a few weeks ago of speaking together with Anthony Esolen at the Illinois Family Institute. His talk was fantastic — he has the kind of subtlety that is vigorous, lively, understandable, and brave. He is not like that scribesnpharisees seminar prof doing nuance to beat the band, watching his own hand as it languidly gestures toward the mahogany wainscot, the wainscot that, incidentally, was bought and paid for by some evangelical donor a hundred and fifty years ago. No — to lurch wildly to a different metaphor — his subtlety is the kind that a fencing master shows just before your foil flies across the room, and you find yourself rubbing your wrist.Defending Marriage
While I was there in Chicago, I picked up this book of his, Defending Marriage, one that I did not have, and am pleased to mention it to you all as my next book of the month. It is simply magnificent. This robust defense of marriage as marriage is, I think, the best thing to pick up if you want to defend marriage against its barbarian critics, or simply if you want to stirred up to love and good works in your own marriage. Fantastico. Arresting. Superb. Smashing. Did I mention that I like it?
On the subject of marriage, not only has secularism kidnapped us all, duck-taped our hands and feet, and thrown us into the trunk of their car, as we are going down the road it slowly dawns on us that we are in the trunk of a clown car escaping from the circus.
The subtitle is “Twelve Arguments for Sanity.” Each chapter tackles a different argument — on why we must not give the sexual revolution the force of irrevocable law, why we must not grant that sexual gratification is a personal matter only, why we should not give godlike powers to the state, and so on.
This book is instructive, helpful, and invigorating. It is moving. It is everything a book on marriage needs to be — political, cultural, spiritual, and personal. In fact, I can’t believe you don’t have it yet.
October 29, 2015
I don't suppose the people who need to read this book will read it. That's a pity, because Esolen undermines every foolish argument for the current muddled situation we're in regarding marriage, sex, gender, family and a host more. He has no qualms about offending anyone who's point of view is pro the kind of society we're living in.
His twelve arguments, though swathing back and forth across some similar ground, are each cogently clear about what their main point is. Just when you feel as though he might be being rather old-fashioned in his point of view (and in his style of writing) he bangs in something that could only be said in the 21st century. He's well and truly up with the play, even though his language may sometimes seem that he's not.
Though he obviously comes from a Catholic background, his arguments are for all Christians - and for all sane people. If ever you feel that we're in a deep mire in Western society, pick up this book. You won't necessarily be comforted, but you will be challenged, and within that challenge you'll see more clearly what is truth and what is lies.
His twelve arguments, though swathing back and forth across some similar ground, are each cogently clear about what their main point is. Just when you feel as though he might be being rather old-fashioned in his point of view (and in his style of writing) he bangs in something that could only be said in the 21st century. He's well and truly up with the play, even though his language may sometimes seem that he's not.
Though he obviously comes from a Catholic background, his arguments are for all Christians - and for all sane people. If ever you feel that we're in a deep mire in Western society, pick up this book. You won't necessarily be comforted, but you will be challenged, and within that challenge you'll see more clearly what is truth and what is lies.
February 8, 2016
The author speaks powerfully to the insanity of redefining marriage. But don't get the impression that the book is only about that. Rather, the author sets forth both an expansive understanding of marriage--its primacy, its importance, its beauty--and detailed arguments against the things that demean it, the redefinition of marriage being only one of those items. (He takes on the sexual revolution and our easy-divorce culture with equal fierceness.)
The arguments unfold beautifully, and apt illustrations are found in every chapter. Some of the concepts he develops include the importance of the support of culture in marriage (or, in our case, against marriage), the educative function of laws (laws teach that marriage is sacred, or, in our case, it teaches many false things about marriage), and how acceptance of sexual deviancy poisons the culture (answering the challenge, "What difference does it make if they want to get married? It doesn't affect me.").
The arguments unfold beautifully, and apt illustrations are found in every chapter. Some of the concepts he develops include the importance of the support of culture in marriage (or, in our case, against marriage), the educative function of laws (laws teach that marriage is sacred, or, in our case, it teaches many false things about marriage), and how acceptance of sexual deviancy poisons the culture (answering the challenge, "What difference does it make if they want to get married? It doesn't affect me.").
September 21, 2021
So, so beautiful.
January 12, 2015
Defending Marriage is another recent book by Dr. Anthony Esolen, with the sole purpose of defending traditional and natural marriage. To do this, Dr. Esolen presents twelve arguments that every Catholic, every Christian should make in defense of marriage. Some of the arguments are, "We must recover the virtues of modesty and purity," or "To celebrate an abnormal behavior makes things worse, not better, for those inclined to engage in it." Dr. Esolen uses art, literature, theological, and cultural arguments to make his point. When you grow up hearing, "Because God said so," as the main argument for why some things are sins, Dr. Esolen's argument make for a refreshing read.
All of the arguments made were very convincing and compelling. However, one stuck with me more than others. The first argument that really rang true was. "We must not condone all forms of consensual activity among adults." In this chapter, Dr. Esolen starts by telling us that no culture, not even the ancient Greeks ever approved of homosexual "marriage" or activities, but that they instead engaged in pedophilia which too is morally wrong. He then explains that if our society accepts homosexual "marriage," a union which cannot create life, then we have passively said that polygamy is acceptable. As Dr. Esolen succinctly says, "You can't have half a jungle." If we want a moral civilization with traditional and natural marriage, we must uproot all sin against marriage.
The great thing about this book is that Dr. Esolen doesn't focus solely on one issue as a danger to marriage. In our given day and age, it would be easy to blame homosexual "marriage" as the thing that is killing traditional marriage. Dr. Esolen is much wiser than that, though, and he blames a combination of the sexual revolution, no fault divorce, and homosexual "marriage" for the death of traditional marriage. There are some books that every Catholic should own, and I firmly believe that this is one of them. In our growing secular age, we need to be able to articulate and defend our core beliefs, and marriage is one of those core beliefs. Read this book. Read it again. Teach your children the arguments for traditional marriage, and instill in them the right beliefs of a moral society.
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August 3, 2024Anthony Esolen is the author of one of my favorite books--10 Ways to Destroy your Child's Imagination, and this is a wonderful book written in the same way about marriage, sexuality, divorce, etc. Grateful to have read and be reminded about the sanctity of marriage and the common sense surrounding marriage between one man and one woman.
January 31, 2015
A cogent argument beyond "the Bible and/or the Church said do" about why our modern sexual ethics, or more precisely, the lack thereof, are hurting our society. Full review http://rannthisthat.blogspot.com/2015...
May 4, 2016
Excellent! This is a powerful and necessary book. Buy (and read it!) it before it gets banned.
Here is a link to a more extensive and helpful review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Here is a link to a more extensive and helpful review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
June 12, 2019
Great book, Esolen spends most of the time appealing and arguing indirectly, so don't go into it expecting a lot of helpful arguments you can take away for debate, rather you'll walk away loving the way that God has made things more.
February 6, 2016
Essential and valuable reading for anyone wanting to defend the Biblical view of marriage.
July 7, 2015
Dr. Esolen's book contains twelve essays, essentially, on various arguments for traditional marriage, some obvious, others that one would not necessarily consider, at least not initially. Readers looking for quick answers for the purpose of doing apologetics for traditional marriage will be disappointed. This book requires one to think, to contemplate, to immerse oneself in order to absorb a larger framework for marriage. Then it is up to the reader to synthesize the arguments in such a way that he could convincingly, or at least cogently, discuss the matter with others. Get out the highlighter and the notepad. Carefully consider and mull over this work. Come to understand the cultural shift that has taken place, why it has taken place, and what it bodes for the future if it goes unchecked.
A bonus is that the book is very well written. I was unsurprised to read at the end of the book that the author is a professor of English. His style flows nicely. He is erudite without being pretentious or abstruse.
Often, throughout my reading, I wondered how a fair-minded homosexual person who favored same-sex unions would deal with the arguments. Would he come away convinced in toto by Esolen? I doubt it. But might he cede some points made by the author? I don't see how he could not. I was not able to easily find such a review, if there even is one, but I would be fascinated to read it if it ever appears.
All in all, this is a must read for persons who have taken a special interest in the topic of marriage. Not the only book to work through in this area, but certainly one that can't be overlooked.
A bonus is that the book is very well written. I was unsurprised to read at the end of the book that the author is a professor of English. His style flows nicely. He is erudite without being pretentious or abstruse.
Often, throughout my reading, I wondered how a fair-minded homosexual person who favored same-sex unions would deal with the arguments. Would he come away convinced in toto by Esolen? I doubt it. But might he cede some points made by the author? I don't see how he could not. I was not able to easily find such a review, if there even is one, but I would be fascinated to read it if it ever appears.
All in all, this is a must read for persons who have taken a special interest in the topic of marriage. Not the only book to work through in this area, but certainly one that can't be overlooked.
August 28, 2018
Not what I expected because I have never read Esolen before, but what a great book. He defends marriage and along the way makes you want to be more virtuous and holy. One of the great benefits of the book is how Esolen presses the truth that marriage is public good, not just a private pleasure. Therefore to redefine marriage and twist it by allowing two men or two women to marry does not just harm the family, it also harms the church and the community. What happens to marriage impacts all. I continue to see the wisdom in public policy that strengthens marriage.
January 6, 2025
Really excellent. The last chapter, with its vision of The Land of Marriage, is my favorite.
September 11, 2014
A common sense defense of a traditional understanding of marriage, this book is bolstered by beautiful writing and numerous references to works of literature. You may not agree with every point of argumentation but you will be edified and challenged by Esolen's vision of the good life.
October 8, 2014
Excellent Theological (Catholic) account of the history and value of families - especially for Children - pretty common sense.
July 26, 2015
So many people have rejected "traditional marriage" due to influence of popular culture. This book lays out the arguments to support "traditional marriage."
February 21, 2016
Excellent.
January 6, 2016
Excellent
September 3, 2019
Short and straightforward writing on how the sexual revolution has influenced so many facets of our society, leading to much moral decay.
November 17, 2025
The last chapter is exactly what I hoped and expected from Esolen, a rhythmic, gorgeous recapitulation of the arguments made, with an eye toward the heavenly and innocent city of Marriage that is present now, if one can only hear/see. An unsurpassably cheerful commendation of marriage for our worldly age of Divisia. Esolen is among the most lucid of rhetors for our day and age. So pleased by his testimony and faithfulness.
Some quotes from the final chapter:
The land of marriages is the land that is not only fit for the child. It is inhabited by the childlike. It is built and fostered, swept clean and festooned with streamers on the holidays, kept warm and hospitable, by people whose lives recall the words of Jesus, who welcome children into their midst because they too strive to be like children. (164)
In the Land of Marriage, even a child knows that happiness can only be found by giving oneself away (165).
The sky is not for work; we works so that we may look at the sky. He is not old enough yet to be astonished by the beauty of a girl. He will be, though. And it may happen sooner than he knows, because a girl with eyes like the hour before the dawn has just turned the corner and has seen him. (166)
People in the Land of Marriage do not pursue happiness. They say that happiness pursues them, and you have to go out of your way to dodge it, by selfishness, stubbornness, pride, envy, avarice, wrath, lust, and the rest of them. They prove that the words of Jesus, that he who would save his life must lose it, reveal their truth even in this world. The quickest path to happiness is to forget yourself and to give yourself away for the happiness of somebody else. (168)
In the Land of Marriage, fidelity and not restlessness is the rule, and so you not only know your neighbors, you know their cousins, too. In Divisia, people strive with all their might to make a name for themselves, because no one knows who they are. In the Land of Marriage, you don’t have to make a name for yourself. You have three or four of them already: what your mother calls you, what your brothers and sisters and cousins and friends call you, what your children call you, and what your wife calls you. (168)
Because people take themselves light any time, for any reason. Because people take themselves lightly in the Land of Marriage, and because there are homemakers to make homes and husbands bound to their houses, you don’t even bother to knock at the front door. You walk around back and call out, ‘Gertie, my gal, where’s that man of yours!’ (169)
In the Land of Marriage, love is attended by a great many feelings—delight, rapture, sorrow, contentment, longing, gratefulness—but it transcends them all. In the Land of Marriage, love is an act of the will, which creates a bond and a commitment that a mere feeling can only hint at. For feelings are like the weather; but love is like the good, solid earth beneath. (172)
For the Land of Marriage is the marchland of the Kingdom of God, as time is the foreword of eternity. And when the bells ring out joyously in the Land of Marriage, some among the worshipers may look to the skies, as if the bells could bear the heavens away by storm, and when the petals cast in celebration fall upon the wedded couple as they leave the church, I believe I see the faint and shimmering image of a city of peace, descending from heaven as a bride adorned for her bridegroom. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with me; and they are home. (174)
Some quotes from the final chapter:
The land of marriages is the land that is not only fit for the child. It is inhabited by the childlike. It is built and fostered, swept clean and festooned with streamers on the holidays, kept warm and hospitable, by people whose lives recall the words of Jesus, who welcome children into their midst because they too strive to be like children. (164)
In the Land of Marriage, even a child knows that happiness can only be found by giving oneself away (165).
The sky is not for work; we works so that we may look at the sky. He is not old enough yet to be astonished by the beauty of a girl. He will be, though. And it may happen sooner than he knows, because a girl with eyes like the hour before the dawn has just turned the corner and has seen him. (166)
People in the Land of Marriage do not pursue happiness. They say that happiness pursues them, and you have to go out of your way to dodge it, by selfishness, stubbornness, pride, envy, avarice, wrath, lust, and the rest of them. They prove that the words of Jesus, that he who would save his life must lose it, reveal their truth even in this world. The quickest path to happiness is to forget yourself and to give yourself away for the happiness of somebody else. (168)
In the Land of Marriage, fidelity and not restlessness is the rule, and so you not only know your neighbors, you know their cousins, too. In Divisia, people strive with all their might to make a name for themselves, because no one knows who they are. In the Land of Marriage, you don’t have to make a name for yourself. You have three or four of them already: what your mother calls you, what your brothers and sisters and cousins and friends call you, what your children call you, and what your wife calls you. (168)
Because people take themselves light any time, for any reason. Because people take themselves lightly in the Land of Marriage, and because there are homemakers to make homes and husbands bound to their houses, you don’t even bother to knock at the front door. You walk around back and call out, ‘Gertie, my gal, where’s that man of yours!’ (169)
In the Land of Marriage, love is attended by a great many feelings—delight, rapture, sorrow, contentment, longing, gratefulness—but it transcends them all. In the Land of Marriage, love is an act of the will, which creates a bond and a commitment that a mere feeling can only hint at. For feelings are like the weather; but love is like the good, solid earth beneath. (172)
For the Land of Marriage is the marchland of the Kingdom of God, as time is the foreword of eternity. And when the bells ring out joyously in the Land of Marriage, some among the worshipers may look to the skies, as if the bells could bear the heavens away by storm, and when the petals cast in celebration fall upon the wedded couple as they leave the church, I believe I see the faint and shimmering image of a city of peace, descending from heaven as a bride adorned for her bridegroom. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with me; and they are home. (174)
October 13, 2020
Like with all of Dr. Esolen’s books that I have read... I absolutely loved this.
🌿💚🌿
“Matrimony is to be endless—hence the ring, that symbol of infinity, and gold, symbol of incorruptibility—because in the marital act, the man and woman each bring precious strands of human history together, from long ages past, and from their union may arise a child who will perhaps marry in turn and do the same. But this is more than animal reproduction, because we are more than animals. We are those beings, as I’ve said, who have apperceptions of infinity. By rights, by the sort of creatures we are, we ought to be born within the garden of a perpetual and sacred vow. We should not be the result of what Milton scornfully calls “casual fruition.” We deserve an ancestral dwelling place, and a secure home, and the promise of the same for our own children in turn.”
🌿💚🌿
“When that man and that woman utter the life-giving promise, they orient themselves toward all the setting suns that ever were, and all the rising suns that shall be. That is because they give their lives to give life, and their promise to be true to one another, come what may, means more than that they will accept the indefinite. It means that they are open to the infinite. For they do not know what life may spring from their loins, and who the children of their children shall be. They are a chapter in a story they have received and not made, and whose end they will not see in this world. It’s a small church with a small spire, surrounded by privet and rosebushes and stands of lilies—the most domestic thing in the world, and therefore the most adventurous thing in the world. In the Land of Marriage, people cast their seed in a seedbed to grow and bring fruit. That is what life itself is like—the true life. The smallest of all the seeds is sown, and it brings forth the child, and of such is the Kingdom of God.”
🌿💚🌿
“Matrimony is to be endless—hence the ring, that symbol of infinity, and gold, symbol of incorruptibility—because in the marital act, the man and woman each bring precious strands of human history together, from long ages past, and from their union may arise a child who will perhaps marry in turn and do the same. But this is more than animal reproduction, because we are more than animals. We are those beings, as I’ve said, who have apperceptions of infinity. By rights, by the sort of creatures we are, we ought to be born within the garden of a perpetual and sacred vow. We should not be the result of what Milton scornfully calls “casual fruition.” We deserve an ancestral dwelling place, and a secure home, and the promise of the same for our own children in turn.”
🌿💚🌿
“When that man and that woman utter the life-giving promise, they orient themselves toward all the setting suns that ever were, and all the rising suns that shall be. That is because they give their lives to give life, and their promise to be true to one another, come what may, means more than that they will accept the indefinite. It means that they are open to the infinite. For they do not know what life may spring from their loins, and who the children of their children shall be. They are a chapter in a story they have received and not made, and whose end they will not see in this world. It’s a small church with a small spire, surrounded by privet and rosebushes and stands of lilies—the most domestic thing in the world, and therefore the most adventurous thing in the world. In the Land of Marriage, people cast their seed in a seedbed to grow and bring fruit. That is what life itself is like—the true life. The smallest of all the seeds is sown, and it brings forth the child, and of such is the Kingdom of God.”
April 7, 2019
Bracing and relentless in an insane world
November 16, 2019
My favorite Esolen book.
February 7, 2021
Esolen is brilliant.
Argument Two: We must not enshrine in law the principle that sexual gratification is a personal matter only, with which society has nothing to do.
‘Now, the community, in its political organization, is not interested in a private friendship. That is, the community may provide the context in which such a friendship may flourish, but it is nothing for the community as such either to recognize or to celebrate. You don’t register your bowling partner with the town clerk. That is not the case with marriage. Weare all interested in marriage, that is, we all have a stake in it, because through marriage, or through actions that should have been performed within the haven of marriage, we have all come into being. It isn’t simply a reflect of the emotions of the man andwoman. It is the act of renewal. It brings together this family of blood relations, natural relations, the kinfolk that lay just claims upon us because we and they share some of the same history, the same cousins, even the same eyes and ears and noses. A marriage marries families, and I is the family, and not the abstracted autonomous individual that is the foundation for the community.
In other words, were it not for children, there would be no reason for weddings at all, since there is no reason for the community to take note of whether John and Mike or any two unmarriageable people have been arguing lately or have patched up their differences, regardless of any behaiou7r they may be indulging in when the doors are closed. But the community does have a powerful interest in what used to be called “public morals,” since these impinge upon the welfare of the family, and thus upon the community’s health and survival. It is precisely because the marital act is a child-making act that the community not only may protect it by the fencing of law and custom; it has a duty to do so, to protect itself and the most vulnerable of its members.’ p17-18
‘We cannot talk about sex without talking about the relations of man and woman in marriage. We cannot talk about those relations without talking about the health and the power and the range of influence of the family. We cannot talk about the family without talking about the education of children which properly belongs to the family. We cannot talk about that education without talking about the preservation and propogation of the child’s family into succeeding generations. All of these issues bear directly upon the health of the State, as our swollen welfare rolls and our shameful rates of incarceration amply show. To say that the individual’s supposed need for sexual gratification, in what manner and under what circumstances he alone is to determine, trumps all other considerations, or is strictly personal, is plain madness, and madness of a sort that no previous society had the wealth or the temerity to countenance.’ p25-26
Argument Three: We should not drive a deeper wedge between men and women
‘Notice that the sexes here are not interchangeable. We’d find it improper and strangely humiliating if Austrian boys were to keep themselves all of in their rooms until the girls who love them scrabble their way up the alpine escarpments to gather some edelweiss. That’s not because of some arbitrary custom. It is because of the bodies of men and women, both as they are in themselves and as they are for one another; those bodies are what give rise to the custom and to others like it. The custom was but a manifestation of a healthy nature.
The girl’s body is made for childbearing and for nursing and caring for children. It is stamped upon her so obviously that only people perversely determined to be blind can miss it. We see it in her breasts, the prominence of her hips, the softness of her skin, the sleekness of her hair, the childlike pitch of her voice, her small hands and slender fingers, her gentle chin, her eyes that well so easily with tears (that’s a physiological fact), and the sudden shifts in her mood, betokening ferocity if she and her children should be unjustly put upon of threatened. She is a hundred things a man is not, and he knows it well.’ p32-33
‘I do not use the word gender, except to refer to the grammatical category. I’m quite aware of the non-sensical idea that sex is one thing, referring only to a minor bit of plumbing in the nether regions, and gender another, referring to everything else about men and women, all of it supposedly “socially constructed” and arbitrary. Yes, I’ve heard it all my academic life, and the more we actually learn about biological maleness and femaleness, the more absurd this line becomes. Every cell of my body is marked as masculine. My adrenal system is different from my wife’s – it is primed for sudden attack and just as sudden calm; an adrenal system for all-out fighting, followed or preceded by cold strategy. Hers is not that way. I doubt anyone caring for small children ought to be that way. My heart-lung capacity at age fifty is that of a woman at her peak, at age twenty. I will possess more brute strength (by far) than my daughter until I am very old, or in the last stages of a terminal disease. My wife sees things I do not see; she makes connections with people I would not make; she has the touch.
We’re not just different people. We are of different sexes. There’s a good reason why no society has ever dreamed up the idea that women should dig long trenches and canals in order to drain land for mass agriculture, while the men cook and clean and take care of the babies. The reason is called starvation. It is also called sanity: no sane woman would have stood for it.’ p36
‘The very assumption behind the campaign for same-sex pseudogamy is that men are not for women and women are not for men, and that our sexual powers are for ourselves alone, to do with as we please without regard to biological nature, to children, and to the common good. It is radically individualistic….In such an environment, no one learns. from the earlies years, to find fulfillment in surrendering the self in the most radical way, to the other who is fundamentally not like me, for a good that far transcends the transient pleasures of the body.’ p39
Argument Five: We should not foreclose the opportunity for members of the same sex to forge friendships with one another that are chaste, deep, and physically expressed
On the impact same-sex marriage and relationships have on same sex friendships: ‘Because language is communal, the individual can choose to make a sign or not. He cannot determine what the sign is to mean, not to others, not to the one he signals, and not even to himself.’p64
Argument Six: We must not condone all forms of consensual activity among adults
‘Again, it is not possible for same-sex pseudogamists to admit that certain human relationships have an essential nature which we must observe, a nature that is both biological and anthropological, and then deny the force of biology and anthropology in their one case. On the grounds they have proposed to justify the pseudogamy of a man and a man, they must justify the real marriage of a brother and a sister. If they admit that no sexual relationship among adults is justified by mere consent alone, then they are on my turf, and must argue accordingly.’ p88
Argument Seven: We must not seal ourselves in a regime of divorce
‘The biologically absurd notion that a man can marry a man is conceivable only now, after we have made the marriage vow strictly ceremonial. The man may be placing the ring on the woman’s finger, but he and she have their free hands behind their backs, with the fingers crossed. They judge other “marriages” by their own, which, though it genuinely is a marriage in fact, is not quite a marriage in intention. It is all too often a late-arriving excuse for a big party, to celebrate not something that is about to happen (since, let’s say, they have already been living together, and may have a child), not something that changes them utterly, but rather their feelings for one another. The marriage is an expensive and showy bit of punctuation for their love. It is no more sacred than a big cookout. But anybody can have a big cookout. Two men can have one, or two women, or two women and a man, or any permutation and combination of the sexes.’ p96-97
‘Most divorces are secured for what people before our time would have considered scandalously frivolous reasons – not physical cruelty, not adultery, but willfulness, irritability, and boredom. Then we set such people free – and divorces are more often than not sought by the party most to blame; the greener-grass seeker, the golddigger, the unreliable, even the adulterous. They then may go on, like carcinogenic free radicals in the body politic, to corrupt yet another household, rather than to have their self-will cordoned off in one household and, possibly, healed by the long-suffering and kindness of the spouse, or by simple maturation. At the worst they would be able to say, “I kept my promise, and our children and our children’s children visit us together, and if we could not be excellent spouses to one another, at least we did not make them suffer the pain of divorce.” And now, if those children marry, they will have an example of perseverance to guide them through the straits they will meet in turn.’ p101-102
Argument Eight: We should not normalize an abnormal behavior
‘Thus male homosexuality is a corruption not of the relations between men and women, but of the relations between men and men. It is an aberrant eroticization of male friendship. And that explains the staggering promiscuity. Male homosexuals don’t want to admit this, but they all know men who have had relations with hundreds of other men, many of them anonymous, almost all of them casual. It doesn’t mean that they are callous by nature. What a man seeks in a woman is not what he seeks in a man. Husband and wife may be “friends,” but they are also less and more than that. My wife is not an alter ego; we do not stand side by side to conquer the world. But I find in her what I lack in myself. She is the mysterious one who is not like me; and my love for her is quite unlike my love for my friend, who is like me. There is nothing casual about marriage, but friendship descends from the summit all the way down to pleasant and passing acquaintances. If it is a friendship that male homosexuals seek, then we might predict many of their otherwise inexplicable behaviors. Friendship is not exclusive; one can never have too many friends; friendship is often celebrated best in boisterous groups; to live even a week or two without the feeling that one has a friend is agonizingly lonely.’ p113-114
‘Another thing that’s odd about the homosexual’s self-designation as “other” is that he has in a most fundamental way denied the obvious other in human life. The theorists sneer at the plain fact that a man is made ofr a woman and a woman for a man, and call it “heteronormativity,” with the sense that it is a wicked and bigoted thing for fathe3rs and mothers to expect their boys to marry girls and their girls to marry boys. But what those perfectly normal children are doing is crossing the very gulf that the homosexuals have not managed to cross, and sometimes have dared not try to cross. The normal children are not stuck on their own sex, like adolescents in neutral.’ p115
Argument Ten: We should not subordinate the welfare of children to the sexual predilections of adults
‘And if the early death of his father was tragic, if it brought him years of sadness or loneliness of frustration, what are we to say about people who would set out to deprive him of a father? What would we say about people who would, in full control of the situation, see to it that a child would be conceived by a mother employed as an incubator, or begotten by a father employed as a stud bull, and then would shunt mother or father away to the outskirts of the child’s life, or forget them altogether? Why is it a sad thing for a child, when one of his parents dies when he is little, perhaps even too little to remember, then to be raised by the survivor and, let’s say he’s lucky, a grandparent or an aunt or uncle – somebody whose relationship to the surviving parent is close and matter-of-course and not prone to the storms of sexual passion – but not a downright wicked thing to force that sadness upon the child, all because of one’s own sexual predilections?’ p137
“Parents will say, “My children can never be happy unless I am happy,” but they should not lay that narcissistic unction to their souls. Children need parents who love them, not parents who are contended; they are too young to be asked to lay down their lives for someone else. It’s not the job of the child to suffer for the parent, but the jo of the parent to endure , to make the best of a poor situation, to swallow his pride, to end her knees, for the sake of the child. I have heard from people at the extreme limit of old age, who still quaver in the voice when they speak about what their divorcing parents did to them – hustling them from one half of a home to another half, enlisting them as confidants one against the other, sometimes holding the hammer silently over the head of the child, who may just find himself a lot less often with the parent he loves, if he does not do exactly what the hammer-holder wants. Children must grow up at age ten, so that their parents don’t have to.’ p142
‘We can’t say at once, “The sex of a child’s ‘parents’ doesn’t matter,” and then say that the sex of the person with whom the adult shares a bed matters so much that he or she can’t possibly conform his or her ways to nature. The boy doesn’t need a father, because sex doesn’t matter; but his mother needs a “wife” and can’t possibly be expected to take a man, because in this case sex matters more than everything else in the world.’ p149
Argument Eleven: We should not give godlike powers to the state
‘What the State essentially does, when it requires us to be parties to the lie that a man can marry a man, is to deny the anterior reality of marriage itself. It says, “Marriage is what we say it shall be,” and that implies, “Families are what we say they are,” and that implies, “There are no zones of natural authority outside the supervision and regulation and management of the State.” We’ve given up on the foolish notion of the Divine Right of Kings, dreamed up by totalizing monarchs of the late Renaissance. Now we have the Divine Right of Bureaucratic States. The old kings used to make common cause with smaller zones of authority, guilds and towns, for example, in order to check the ambitions of the noblemen. The new kings have obliterated those smaller zones of authority in principle, and seek to do so in reality also. That is in large part what public schools are now for; the education of children against the authority and direction of their own parents' p158
Argument Two: We must not enshrine in law the principle that sexual gratification is a personal matter only, with which society has nothing to do.
‘Now, the community, in its political organization, is not interested in a private friendship. That is, the community may provide the context in which such a friendship may flourish, but it is nothing for the community as such either to recognize or to celebrate. You don’t register your bowling partner with the town clerk. That is not the case with marriage. Weare all interested in marriage, that is, we all have a stake in it, because through marriage, or through actions that should have been performed within the haven of marriage, we have all come into being. It isn’t simply a reflect of the emotions of the man andwoman. It is the act of renewal. It brings together this family of blood relations, natural relations, the kinfolk that lay just claims upon us because we and they share some of the same history, the same cousins, even the same eyes and ears and noses. A marriage marries families, and I is the family, and not the abstracted autonomous individual that is the foundation for the community.
In other words, were it not for children, there would be no reason for weddings at all, since there is no reason for the community to take note of whether John and Mike or any two unmarriageable people have been arguing lately or have patched up their differences, regardless of any behaiou7r they may be indulging in when the doors are closed. But the community does have a powerful interest in what used to be called “public morals,” since these impinge upon the welfare of the family, and thus upon the community’s health and survival. It is precisely because the marital act is a child-making act that the community not only may protect it by the fencing of law and custom; it has a duty to do so, to protect itself and the most vulnerable of its members.’ p17-18
‘We cannot talk about sex without talking about the relations of man and woman in marriage. We cannot talk about those relations without talking about the health and the power and the range of influence of the family. We cannot talk about the family without talking about the education of children which properly belongs to the family. We cannot talk about that education without talking about the preservation and propogation of the child’s family into succeeding generations. All of these issues bear directly upon the health of the State, as our swollen welfare rolls and our shameful rates of incarceration amply show. To say that the individual’s supposed need for sexual gratification, in what manner and under what circumstances he alone is to determine, trumps all other considerations, or is strictly personal, is plain madness, and madness of a sort that no previous society had the wealth or the temerity to countenance.’ p25-26
Argument Three: We should not drive a deeper wedge between men and women
‘Notice that the sexes here are not interchangeable. We’d find it improper and strangely humiliating if Austrian boys were to keep themselves all of in their rooms until the girls who love them scrabble their way up the alpine escarpments to gather some edelweiss. That’s not because of some arbitrary custom. It is because of the bodies of men and women, both as they are in themselves and as they are for one another; those bodies are what give rise to the custom and to others like it. The custom was but a manifestation of a healthy nature.
The girl’s body is made for childbearing and for nursing and caring for children. It is stamped upon her so obviously that only people perversely determined to be blind can miss it. We see it in her breasts, the prominence of her hips, the softness of her skin, the sleekness of her hair, the childlike pitch of her voice, her small hands and slender fingers, her gentle chin, her eyes that well so easily with tears (that’s a physiological fact), and the sudden shifts in her mood, betokening ferocity if she and her children should be unjustly put upon of threatened. She is a hundred things a man is not, and he knows it well.’ p32-33
‘I do not use the word gender, except to refer to the grammatical category. I’m quite aware of the non-sensical idea that sex is one thing, referring only to a minor bit of plumbing in the nether regions, and gender another, referring to everything else about men and women, all of it supposedly “socially constructed” and arbitrary. Yes, I’ve heard it all my academic life, and the more we actually learn about biological maleness and femaleness, the more absurd this line becomes. Every cell of my body is marked as masculine. My adrenal system is different from my wife’s – it is primed for sudden attack and just as sudden calm; an adrenal system for all-out fighting, followed or preceded by cold strategy. Hers is not that way. I doubt anyone caring for small children ought to be that way. My heart-lung capacity at age fifty is that of a woman at her peak, at age twenty. I will possess more brute strength (by far) than my daughter until I am very old, or in the last stages of a terminal disease. My wife sees things I do not see; she makes connections with people I would not make; she has the touch.
We’re not just different people. We are of different sexes. There’s a good reason why no society has ever dreamed up the idea that women should dig long trenches and canals in order to drain land for mass agriculture, while the men cook and clean and take care of the babies. The reason is called starvation. It is also called sanity: no sane woman would have stood for it.’ p36
‘The very assumption behind the campaign for same-sex pseudogamy is that men are not for women and women are not for men, and that our sexual powers are for ourselves alone, to do with as we please without regard to biological nature, to children, and to the common good. It is radically individualistic….In such an environment, no one learns. from the earlies years, to find fulfillment in surrendering the self in the most radical way, to the other who is fundamentally not like me, for a good that far transcends the transient pleasures of the body.’ p39
Argument Five: We should not foreclose the opportunity for members of the same sex to forge friendships with one another that are chaste, deep, and physically expressed
On the impact same-sex marriage and relationships have on same sex friendships: ‘Because language is communal, the individual can choose to make a sign or not. He cannot determine what the sign is to mean, not to others, not to the one he signals, and not even to himself.’p64
Argument Six: We must not condone all forms of consensual activity among adults
‘Again, it is not possible for same-sex pseudogamists to admit that certain human relationships have an essential nature which we must observe, a nature that is both biological and anthropological, and then deny the force of biology and anthropology in their one case. On the grounds they have proposed to justify the pseudogamy of a man and a man, they must justify the real marriage of a brother and a sister. If they admit that no sexual relationship among adults is justified by mere consent alone, then they are on my turf, and must argue accordingly.’ p88
Argument Seven: We must not seal ourselves in a regime of divorce
‘The biologically absurd notion that a man can marry a man is conceivable only now, after we have made the marriage vow strictly ceremonial. The man may be placing the ring on the woman’s finger, but he and she have their free hands behind their backs, with the fingers crossed. They judge other “marriages” by their own, which, though it genuinely is a marriage in fact, is not quite a marriage in intention. It is all too often a late-arriving excuse for a big party, to celebrate not something that is about to happen (since, let’s say, they have already been living together, and may have a child), not something that changes them utterly, but rather their feelings for one another. The marriage is an expensive and showy bit of punctuation for their love. It is no more sacred than a big cookout. But anybody can have a big cookout. Two men can have one, or two women, or two women and a man, or any permutation and combination of the sexes.’ p96-97
‘Most divorces are secured for what people before our time would have considered scandalously frivolous reasons – not physical cruelty, not adultery, but willfulness, irritability, and boredom. Then we set such people free – and divorces are more often than not sought by the party most to blame; the greener-grass seeker, the golddigger, the unreliable, even the adulterous. They then may go on, like carcinogenic free radicals in the body politic, to corrupt yet another household, rather than to have their self-will cordoned off in one household and, possibly, healed by the long-suffering and kindness of the spouse, or by simple maturation. At the worst they would be able to say, “I kept my promise, and our children and our children’s children visit us together, and if we could not be excellent spouses to one another, at least we did not make them suffer the pain of divorce.” And now, if those children marry, they will have an example of perseverance to guide them through the straits they will meet in turn.’ p101-102
Argument Eight: We should not normalize an abnormal behavior
‘Thus male homosexuality is a corruption not of the relations between men and women, but of the relations between men and men. It is an aberrant eroticization of male friendship. And that explains the staggering promiscuity. Male homosexuals don’t want to admit this, but they all know men who have had relations with hundreds of other men, many of them anonymous, almost all of them casual. It doesn’t mean that they are callous by nature. What a man seeks in a woman is not what he seeks in a man. Husband and wife may be “friends,” but they are also less and more than that. My wife is not an alter ego; we do not stand side by side to conquer the world. But I find in her what I lack in myself. She is the mysterious one who is not like me; and my love for her is quite unlike my love for my friend, who is like me. There is nothing casual about marriage, but friendship descends from the summit all the way down to pleasant and passing acquaintances. If it is a friendship that male homosexuals seek, then we might predict many of their otherwise inexplicable behaviors. Friendship is not exclusive; one can never have too many friends; friendship is often celebrated best in boisterous groups; to live even a week or two without the feeling that one has a friend is agonizingly lonely.’ p113-114
‘Another thing that’s odd about the homosexual’s self-designation as “other” is that he has in a most fundamental way denied the obvious other in human life. The theorists sneer at the plain fact that a man is made ofr a woman and a woman for a man, and call it “heteronormativity,” with the sense that it is a wicked and bigoted thing for fathe3rs and mothers to expect their boys to marry girls and their girls to marry boys. But what those perfectly normal children are doing is crossing the very gulf that the homosexuals have not managed to cross, and sometimes have dared not try to cross. The normal children are not stuck on their own sex, like adolescents in neutral.’ p115
Argument Ten: We should not subordinate the welfare of children to the sexual predilections of adults
‘And if the early death of his father was tragic, if it brought him years of sadness or loneliness of frustration, what are we to say about people who would set out to deprive him of a father? What would we say about people who would, in full control of the situation, see to it that a child would be conceived by a mother employed as an incubator, or begotten by a father employed as a stud bull, and then would shunt mother or father away to the outskirts of the child’s life, or forget them altogether? Why is it a sad thing for a child, when one of his parents dies when he is little, perhaps even too little to remember, then to be raised by the survivor and, let’s say he’s lucky, a grandparent or an aunt or uncle – somebody whose relationship to the surviving parent is close and matter-of-course and not prone to the storms of sexual passion – but not a downright wicked thing to force that sadness upon the child, all because of one’s own sexual predilections?’ p137
“Parents will say, “My children can never be happy unless I am happy,” but they should not lay that narcissistic unction to their souls. Children need parents who love them, not parents who are contended; they are too young to be asked to lay down their lives for someone else. It’s not the job of the child to suffer for the parent, but the jo of the parent to endure , to make the best of a poor situation, to swallow his pride, to end her knees, for the sake of the child. I have heard from people at the extreme limit of old age, who still quaver in the voice when they speak about what their divorcing parents did to them – hustling them from one half of a home to another half, enlisting them as confidants one against the other, sometimes holding the hammer silently over the head of the child, who may just find himself a lot less often with the parent he loves, if he does not do exactly what the hammer-holder wants. Children must grow up at age ten, so that their parents don’t have to.’ p142
‘We can’t say at once, “The sex of a child’s ‘parents’ doesn’t matter,” and then say that the sex of the person with whom the adult shares a bed matters so much that he or she can’t possibly conform his or her ways to nature. The boy doesn’t need a father, because sex doesn’t matter; but his mother needs a “wife” and can’t possibly be expected to take a man, because in this case sex matters more than everything else in the world.’ p149
Argument Eleven: We should not give godlike powers to the state
‘What the State essentially does, when it requires us to be parties to the lie that a man can marry a man, is to deny the anterior reality of marriage itself. It says, “Marriage is what we say it shall be,” and that implies, “Families are what we say they are,” and that implies, “There are no zones of natural authority outside the supervision and regulation and management of the State.” We’ve given up on the foolish notion of the Divine Right of Kings, dreamed up by totalizing monarchs of the late Renaissance. Now we have the Divine Right of Bureaucratic States. The old kings used to make common cause with smaller zones of authority, guilds and towns, for example, in order to check the ambitions of the noblemen. The new kings have obliterated those smaller zones of authority in principle, and seek to do so in reality also. That is in large part what public schools are now for; the education of children against the authority and direction of their own parents' p158
January 18, 2023
I've read a few books on marriage or like topics, but none so potent and powerful as Esolen's "Defending Marriage." Matt Walsh recently published his hit documentary, "What is a Woman," in which he dismantles all of transexualism and finds at its heart, as is the case with all perverseness and sin, nothing at all. Esolen hits right at the heart of not only transexualism, but ALL perversions of relationships. His assessment of homosexuality and true male friendship was not only particularly useful and enlightening, but incredibly relevant to these increasingly confusing times. Where so many others have failed, Esolen craftily and unbelievably makes sense of the mass insanity affecting the western world in the current generation. I highly recommend Esolen's work to those who feel at all affected by the vast perversions of relationships in the west.
April 30, 2022
Best treatment of the issue from a natural law perspective that I’ve read. I originally wasn’t that interested in reading it, already being familiar with most of the broad arguments on the topic. However, several people that I follow on Goodreads gave it exceptionally high praise so I figured it was worth looking into. I was not disappointed!
February 19, 2025
Clear and Direct
'Defending Marriage' argues the Biblical view of marriage between a man and woman, also the children they bear. An important message in our times of gender confusion, fornication, adultery, abortion and incest. Adding this to my list of books to read with my grown children.
'Defending Marriage' argues the Biblical view of marriage between a man and woman, also the children they bear. An important message in our times of gender confusion, fornication, adultery, abortion and incest. Adding this to my list of books to read with my grown children.
April 24, 2022
Not the strongest arguments since he is mostly using natural law/human intuition as a base, but it is a good book to make your heart sing in harmony with the beauty of marriage as God's gift to man and woman.
April 23, 2025
Beautiful. Deeply moving. I enjoyed this book so much I would only read little bits of it at a time, so as to make it last longer.
December 5, 2025
4.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews