“In claiming for homosexuals the right to marry,” she reasons, the “state also claims for itself the ability to declare what constitutes marriage . . . It transforms marriage from a pre-political obligation into its own creation.”

But as an artificial creation of the state, same-sex “marriage” is “an institution that needs to be coddled . . . Its very fragility demands a culture in which it is protected.” This means, as Sugrue argues, that “once marriage becomes a statist institution for the sake of consenting adults, the state will increasingly be called upon to create the social conditions to protect these unions.”

The need for coddling means the state will use public education for this end, and align itself against churches that refuse to recognize same-sex “marriage.”

State-ordered gay “marriage” is an attack, not only on legitimate marriage, but upon religious freedom and the freedom not to have one’s children indoctrinated into alien ideas about marriage.