¹ Spiegel, James S., ‘Why Same-Sex Marriage Is Unjust’, Think 15.43 (2016): 81–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² George, Robert P., ‘“Same-Sex Marriage” and “Moral Neutrality”’, in Wolfe, Christopher (ed.) Homosexuality and American Public Life (Dallas: Spence Publishing, 1999), 141–53Google Scholar, at p. 144.

³ Corvino, John and Gallagher, Maggie, Debating Same-Sex Marriage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar (emphasis in the original).

⁴ Danto, Arthur C., ‘Philosophers and the Ritual of Marriage’, Think 6.17/18 (2008): 7–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 9.

⁵ Two points are worth noting here. The first is that what is really needed is a debate about what the purpose of marriage should be, and not merely what its purpose currently is. The second is that Spiegel would probably respond to my first criticism as follows: ‘if same-sex marriage is permitted, then any extra endorsement of heterosexual marriages would be merely symbolic and therefore trivial’. But why should we think this? First, not everything that is symbolic is trivial. The Purple Heart and the Presidential Medal of Freedom are symbolic, but hardly trivial. Second, there is no reason to think that the only alternatives on offer have to be symbolic. The state's awarding free college education to all those who are in a heterosexual marriage would hardly be trivial or symbolic. Third, and more seriously, this response does not meet the criticism in the body of the text. Spiegel has given us no reason to think that his particular conception of marriage's purpose is the correct one.