Cheryl Wetzstein interviews David Blankenhorn, author of "The Future of Marriage":

In fact, he says, researchers have identified at least 24 negative consequences of legalizing same-sex "marriage," virtually all of which relate to how it changes the institutional aspects of marriage.

What's at stake with same-sex "marriage" is that it reinforces the "deinstitutionalization" -- the weakening or overturning of customary forms -- of marriage for everyone, Mr. Blankenhorn says, adding that some people support same-sex "marriage" precisely because they approve of such a deinstitutionalization.

Marriage is already battered, he says, noting that many left-leaning academics and intellectuals -- since Marxist theorist Frederick Engels more than 120 years ago -- have labeled it "a failed and dangerous institution." More than a few contemporary researchers predict that marriage is inexorably evolving into diverse family forms. Meanwhile, many American men and women are already living lifestyles that disconnect marriage from sex and childbearing.

This disconnection of marriage from sex and childbearing is part of the "contraceptive culture" addressed by Allan Carlson in the latest issue of Touchstone magazine, tracing the history of Protestant views on contraception:

The key figure in developing a Protestant family ethic was Martin Luther. ... The first element in Luther's Protestant family ethic was a broad celebration not simply of marriage but of procreation.

For Luther, God's words in Genesis 1:28, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth," were more than a blessing, even more than a command. They were, he declared in his 1521 treatise on The Estate of Marriage, "a divine ordinance which it is not our prerogative to hinder or ignore." ...

Marriage with the expectation of children was also a spiritual expression. Luther saw procreation as the very essence of the human life in Eden before the Fall. As he wrote in his Commentary on Genesis:

[T]ruly in all nature there was no activity more excellent and more admirable than procreation. After the proclamation of the name of God it is the most important activity Adam and Eve in the State of innocence could carry on -- as free from sin in doing this as they were in praising God.

The fall of Adam and Eve into sin interrupted this pure, exuberant potential fertility. Even so, the German Reformer praised each conception of a new child as an act of "wonderment . . . wholly beyond our understanding," a miracle bearing the "lovely music of nature," a faint reminder of life before the Fall ....

The traditional Protestant view of the family continued into the 20th century, but then changed drastically:

At the astonishing and deeply disturbing 1961 North American Conference on Church and Family, sponsored by the National Council of Churches ... population-control advocate Lester Kirkendall argued that America had "entered a sexual economy of abundance" where contraception would allow unrestrained sexual experimentation.

Wardell Pomeroy of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research explained how the new science of sexology required the abandonment of all old moral categories. Psychologist Evelyn Hooker celebrated the sterile lives of homosexuals. Planned Parenthood's Mary Calderone made the case for universal contraceptive use, while colleague Alan Guttmacher urged the reform of America's "mean-spirited" anti-abortion laws.

Ideas have consequences, and the ideas of the contraceptive culture had a powerful social impact. In 1960, the U.S. total fertility rate (or TFR, a demographic statistic representing the average lifetime births per woman, based on current birth rates) was 3.65; by 1975, U.S. TFR had fallen to 1.77 -- a 50 percent reduction in just 15 years.

But in recent years, Mr. Carlson notes, some Protestants have reconsidered the sterile ideas of the late 20th century:

"It is clear that there is a major rethinking going on among Evangelicals on this issue, especially among young people," R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently told the Chicago Tribune. "There is a real push back against the contraceptive culture now."

In his last years, Francis Schaeffer seemed to be moving toward the historic Christian view of contraception. Since 1980, several resolutions adopted by the Southern Baptists at their annual meeting have criticized contraception. By the close of the twentieth century, the Family Research Council featured special reports on "The Empty Promise of Contraception" and "The Bipartisan Blunder of Title X," the latter referring to the domestic contraception program in the United States.

However, the specter of global warming has provided yet another excuse for what might be called Anti-Babyism. The puzzling thing about those who issue dramatic warnings about the need for population control is why they direct their jeremiads toward rich countries like the United States and Britain. Looking at the latest global statistics on fertility rates, we see that the U.S. currently ranks 126th (2.09 TFR), while the United Kingdom is 174th (1.66 TFR). The top five countries are:

1. Mali (7.38 TFR)
2. Niger (7.37 TFR)
3. Uganda (6.84 TFR)
4. Somalia (6.68 TFR)
5. Afghanistan (6.64 TFR)

However, the population-control advocates haven't had much success preaching Malthusian doom and gloom to Ugandans and Afghans.

-- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor