Originally published at National Catholic Register
Editor’s Note: Law professor Helen Alvaré delivered remarks during a panel presented by Organization of American States (OAS) on Oct. 21, 2024, ahead of International Religious Freedom Day. Her remarks on the impact of Christian culture on our society especially as it pertains to marriage and family follow below.
Increasingly today, states are pressuring religion’s ability to witness and to transmit religious wisdom particularly about sex, marriage and parenting. This happens often via laws regulating educational content, and laws affecting religious employment or housing or business practices.
Ironically, this pressure is increasing precisely at the same time that empirical scholarship — in sociology, psychology and economics, for example — is clearly and strongly revealing how religious wisdom about the family is measurably associated with issues: family stability, happiness, greater equality between men and women, stable care for vulnerable children, social stability, and even with the potential to narrow the income, wealth, educational, and employment gaps persisting between majority and minority populations, earlier and more recent immigrants, and the more and less privileged.
In short, showing respect for romantic partners and family members in the ways that religious teachings recommend turns out to be the beginning of
