Preserving marriage as a union of man and woman is bound to fail unless we address the true point of contention in the marriage debate, one completely ignored by even the best legal advocates for redefining marriage: the question “what is marriage?”

The Abolition of Man-and-Woman: 

On Marriage, Grammar, and Legal Strategy

by  Michael W. Hannon

Last month, NYU School of Law hosted a symposium titled “Making Constitutional Change: The Past, Present, and Future Role of Perry v. Brown.” Originally designated Perry v. Schwarzenegger, this is the case in which district judge Vaughn Walker declared California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional, a decision later affirmed by the Ninth Circuit. It is also the case that proponents of legally redefining marriage hope will secure same-sex couples a federal right to marry, if and when the US Supreme Court grants it certiorariin the not-too-distant future.

The line-up for the NYU Perry symposium featured a veritable who’s who of the so-called “gay rights movement,” including Rachel Maddow, the popular MSNBC host and the first Rhodes Scholar to identify as lesbian; Kenji Yoshino, NYU Law’s distinguished constitutional law professor, and author of the movement’s most celebrated response to the now famous essay “What Is Marriage?”; Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, one of the foremost NGOs pushing the legal redefinition of marriage; Jon W. Davidson, legal director of Lambda Legal, the nation’s oldest and largest LGBT rights organization; and Matthew Coles, the director of the ACLU Center for Equality.

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