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Marriage is a core institution of societies throughout the world and throughout history. It's something that has provided permanence and stability for our very social structure.

Marriage is built around complementarity of the sexes, and therefore the institution of marriage is a support for stable families and societies.

I think there is some credibility to the notion that marriage is an institution. It meant something very different hundreds of years ago when it became the norm for people to go off and pair.

Society may no longer define marriage in the only way marriage has ever been defined in the annals of recorded history. Many societies allowed polygamy, many allowed child marriages, some allowed marriage within families; but none, in thousands of years, defined marriage as the union of people of the same sex.

Culture, what you believe, what you value, how you live matters. Now, as fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debates from time to time, so it is today with the enduring institution of marriage. Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.

Marriage has historically, as long as there's been human history, meant a man and a woman in a relationship for life. Once we change that definition, then where does it go from there?

The institution of marriage, if you look at it over many centuries, has come and gone.

Traditional marriage between a man and a woman has been a cornerstone of our society for generations. If we are going to change that, it ought to be done by the will of the people.

The marriage of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored in all cultures and by every religious faith. It's in this institution that children are meant to be nurtured. We know this after thousands of years of human experience.