But if marriage is a natural good then it is also a public good, an "honourable estate," which is of wider than private concern and so falls within the dutyof government to defend.
Indeed, it is simply fanciful to pretend that marriage could be privatised, because of the "irreducibly public function" it performs "of attaching mothers and fathers to their children and to one another." The rights of children mean that marriage must inevitably be of interest to the state.