Brian Raum, senior counsel and head of marriage litigation for the Alliance Defense Fund, contributes to the SCOTUSblog symposium on marriage:

Marriage has always been society’s way of endorsing and promoting legally binding relationships between men and women for the good of all. The government saw that it was good for men and women to be legally bound – especially for the sake of children, which inevitably result. We have celebrated the idea that through this institution the next generation is produced, nurtured, and educated; therefore, the government can take a constitutionally justified position that this time-honored, natural family structure is the most beneficial to society over all others. This is the message of marriage, and it is a rational one.

Those who seek to redefine marriage understand that it is only through marriage redefinition that society can go from the protection of homosexual behavior set out in Lawrence to the promotion, endorsement, and celebration of same-sex relationships sought in Perry v. Brown and in the current challenges to federal DOMA. These cases are much more about engineering societal approval of same-sex relationships than anything else.