Why natural law arguments make evangelicals uncomfortable

Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to overturn California’s Proposition 8 poured gasoline on an already raging debate about whether the state should recognize permanent, monogamous gay and lesbian relationships as marriage.

Yet at the very end of 2010, the conversation about gay marriage took a very different turn. In early December, three philosophers—Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan Anderson published one of the most important efforts in recent years to defend traditional marriage from a purely philosophical standpoint. Though the paper, published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, was obviously less visible than Judge Walker’s decision, it has momentarily managed to reframe the public discourse around a single nagging question: what is marriage?