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Not so much fun: The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, and Morals tries to put the opposition to gay marriage on a scholarly, non-bigoted, non-religious basis. Co-editors Robert George of Princeton and Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago present eleven papers delivered at a Princeton conference in December 2004.
“We are moving from this natural, universal model to a greater embrace of what I call ‘disembodied procreation’ in same-sex unions, where sperm and egg meet only in a Petri dish and foreplay is a legal contract. [In one article] Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, considers family changes during the past 40 years. The pill and legalized abortion, says Wilcox, have dramatically separated sex, procreation, and the larger family unit. Each now stands on its own. Undermining the need for marriage and family, these medical ‘advances’ have disproportionately hurt the poor.”