SAN MARCOS, CA – Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Founding President of the Ruth Institute, issued the following statement in response to the overturn of DOMA by a federal judge in Boston, Massachusetts, earlier this week:
“This decision reflects an extremely superficial understanding of the social purposes of marriage. Read more…
Click here for more information on joining us for the “Doctors are In” Gala! August 12th
by Ruth Art Director, Todd Bingham
This week the Ruth Institute experienced a somewhat amusing shot across our bow: a negative and somewhat specious analysis of our logo, of all things. Read more…
The Houston Baptist University has just founded the Guild Institute for Christian Family Studies on their campus. I am truly honored that they invited me to give the Inaugural Lecture for this Institute. They lost no time in getting the video of my talk up on You Tube. I just gave this talk on Monday night!
I look forward to collaborating with my new friends at HBU on a variety of academic projects.
Watch the YouTube video…..
by William C. Duncan, President of the Marriage Law Foundation and Ruth Institute Board Member
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently issued an opinion ordering the State of Louisiana to issue an amended birth certificate for 
a child born in Louisiana but listing as the child’s parents two men. Read more…
Ruth Institute Staff post
We were all transfixed this afternoon as Tiger Woods took the international podium to follow in the footsteps of countless other men in the public eye who got caught 
inflagrante delicto by offering his heartfelt apologies both to us and his (absent) wife.
So….what? Do we believe him? Do we not? Does it matter? Was he actually contrite about what he did or just for getting caught?
This man is arguably the most visible athlete in the civilized world; his trail cuts and leaves a wide swath in our society, and hence in the minds of our children.
Should Tiger be held to a higher standard? What do you think, Ruth supporters and blog readers?
We put up a short poll about this to the right of this page, but we want to know how you feel beyond the numbers. Weigh in here and tell us what you think the ramifications of this marriage scandal are, or will be?
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
State-sanctioned same-sex marriage restructures the incentives for child-rearing arrangements, and much else. Few are thinking through how people will react. Read more…
By by Helen Alvaré, J.D.
Senior Fellow in Law and Ruth Institute Advisory Board Member
In my last column, I concluded that while public and private actors have taken many different and sometimes logical approaches to reducing out of wedlock pregnancies, they have also missed a crucial aspect of the problem: the difficulties men and women are experiencing in their relationships with one another, as evidenced by their unwillingness to commit to one another, even after a baby is conceived.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
IN 2007, THE MEDIA HAD A FEEDING FRENZY around a voice-mail message actor Alec Baldwin left his daughter. He screamed at her for not answering her phone. The public was shocked: many assumed that he was yet another self-absorbed celebrity, with neither control over himself nor regard for his daughter. But in fact, Baldwin had been caught in the web of the totalitarian nightmare known as the American family court system. Read more…
Report on the Panel on “the Politics of Marriage and Family” at the 2009 National Summit on Marriage, Parenting and Families at Hampton University.
By Lynn D. Wardle, Bruce C. Hafen Professor of Law, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University.
I was honored to participate in the recent National Summit on Marriage, Parenting and Families at Hampton University, September 29-30, 2009, co-sponsored by the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting. My panel on Wednesday addressed “The Politics of Marriage and Family” and included in addition to myself former Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears of the Georgia Supreme Court, former Judge Arthur Burnett of the District of Columbia Superior Court, two Virginia elected officials (a state Senator and a city councilman), and Theodore M. Shaw, former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund was moderator. Read more…
by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law 
In two previous columns I suggested that a not insignificant cause of the current rates of out of wedlock pregnancies in the US is a breakdown of healthy relations between women and men. Past attempts to address high rates of nonmarital pregnancies failed to note this possible cause. Read more…
by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Ruth Institute Founder
Many commentators read Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate as if it were a think tank white paper, and ask whether he endorses their particular policy preferences. It is a mistake to read the encyclical in this way. A close look at the document’s introduction makes plain that Benedict is not a man of the Left or of the Right: He is a non-ideological man of God. Read more…
By William C. Duncan, Esq.
Director of the Marriage Law Foundation and
Academic Advisory Board Member of the Ruth Institute
This article is from National Review Online.
In his 1988 book Silent Revolution, Herbert Jacob described how one of the most significant changes to family law in the 20th century, no-fault divorce, began in California and spread through the states with very little public debate or controversy. This remarkable transformation was presented, and largely accepted, as routine policymaking in the domain of legal experts.
by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Many commentators read Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate as if it were a think tank white paper, and ask whether he endorses their particular policy preferences. It is a mistake to read the encyclical in this way. A close look at the document’s introduction makes plain that Benedict is not a man of the Left or of the Right: He is a non-ideological man of God.
by Jennifer Roback Morse
The screen version of Jodi Picoult’s novel poses the question: how much are we entitled to use each other?
The use and misuse of artificial reproductive technology (ART) is a subject that deserves more attention than it commonly gets. My Sister’s Keeper is a thought-provoking dramatization of one of the most troubling ethical issues of the ART industry: the creation of “savior siblings”. Read more…
by Helen Alvaré, J.D.,
Senior Fellow in Law
and Ruth Institute Advisory Board Member
Several columns ago, I addressed the worry that our country’s nearly 40% out of wedlock birthrate might represent some sort of tipping point for marriage, for children’s well-being and for our society’s shared future. I reviewed in-depth interviews with single moms which revealed nearly bottomless wells of mistrust regarding the men who fathered their children. The men’s behavior did not seem to merit better. Read more…
Dr Jennifer Roback Morse
Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate is his contribution to the course of Catholic Social Teaching. Many commentators seem to read this document as if it were a think tank white paper, and ask whether the Popes endorse their particular policy preferences. I must say that I surprised myself by not reflexively reading it in this way. After all, I spent many years teaching free market economics. I distinctly remember reading Centesimus Annus for the first time, and mentally checking to see if I agreed with it. Read more…
by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
All friends of democracy should be troubled that the same court whose decision to nullify a law passed by the state legislature that was overruled by a majority of California voters in the last election is now being asked to override the decision of the people. Gay rights activists are asking the state’s Supreme Court to overturn voter-approved Proposition 8 that limited marriage to one man and one woman on a technicality. Read more…
By by Helen Alvaré, J.D.
Senior Fellow in Law and Ruth Institute Advisory Board Member
In my last column, I concluded that while public and private actors have taken many different and sometimes logical approaches to reducing out of wedlock pregnancies, they have also missed a crucial aspect of the problem: the difficulties men and women are experiencing in their relationships with one another, as evidenced by their unwillingness to commit to one another, even after a baby is conceived. Read more…
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