Last week, the Institute for American Values, a private, nonpartisan organization that focuses on family issues, announced that it was calling a truce in the culture wars and would no longer take a side in the debate over same-sex marriage.

The institute’s president, David Blankenhorn, was considered a key national opponent of gay unions.

The decision has some importance for one of its board members -- Leah Ward Sears, the former chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Consider this Associated Press article from 2009, as Sears was leaving the bench:

Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, considered a potential nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, has drawn criticism from gay rights groups after announcing plans to join a think tank whose founder is an outspoken opponent of gay marriage.

An op-ed by Sears that appears today in the Fulton County Daily Report includes these paragraphs:

[T]he Institute, which has long had members from both sides of the gay marriage debate, is determined to shift its energies to saving the institution of marriage, regardless of whom one chooses as a mate. Whether a person is straight or gay, bisexual or transgender, we are saying, the challenge is to figure out how to strengthen marriage and our families for the broader benefit to society.

 

I'm pleased with the direction the Institute is taking. Unlike David, I was never against same-sex marriage. But much like David, I've witnessed the fallout from broken families in the past several decades, during which divorce and out-of-wedlock births have skyrocketed, and unstable, serial cohabiting relationships have become the norm for raising children.

By the way, did we forget to mention that by this summer, the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees cases generated in Alabama, Georgia and Florida, will have three vacancies?