Peter Sprigg, a Maryland Resident and senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, asks in The Baltimore Sun, “do children matter in Maryland?”:

That is the question that will be at stake in 2011, when the Maryland legislature considers radically changing the definition of our most fundamental social institution — marriage.

The question of whether Maryland should place its highest stamp of official government affirmation on sexual unions between two men or two women actually has little to do with debates over "sexual orientation" and even less to do with bromides about "equality."

… Marriage is a public institution because it serves two public purposes: bringing together men and women for the reproduction of the human race and keeping together a man and woman to raise to maturity the children produced by their union.

The existence of future generations of children is fundamental to the survival of any society. The quality of their nurture is directly related to the quality of life in that society. Bonding the man and woman whose sexual union produces a child to one another and to that child is by far the most efficient way of ensuring that nurture. [Continue reading]