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Enitan Ogunbekun

Anthony Gregg

ENGL1101

09-20-21

Rhetorical Analysis of Ryan Anderson Article on Marriage

Ryan Anderson's article "The Social Costs of Abandoning the Meaning of Marriage"

argues that revisionists views on marriage have created a society in which individuals undermine

society's understanding of not only the value of marriage but also the cause for it. Anderson

defends his claim using logos and ethos. He highlights the negative effects of these new norms of

marriage in order to persuade the audience to start rejecting revisionism and start working to

restore the considered normal marriage norms. While Anderson thoroughly indulges in the

importance of marriage, his viewpoint exclusively stands on marriage consisting of monogamy,

sexual exclusivity, and heterosexualism.

Anderson uses ethos and logos in order to reveal both the negative and positive effects of

children who grow up in households where their parents have committed marriages. Ethos is the

strongest device that he uses. He specifically indulges on the addition of children in a marriage

emphasizing that due to the fact that marriage pledges husband and wife "faithful by vows of

permanence and exclusivity" if men choose not to commit to these vows the "likelihood of

creating fatherless children and fragmented families increases" (np.1) By painting the image into

readers minds of the possibility of another child without a father or any parent figure, Anderson

is eliciting the emotions of guilt and sympathy out of the audience. The guilt and sympathy that

the audience will feel are due to the fact that a child might be likely to suffer the pain of

abandonment and feeling undesirable when they no longer have a father figure present.
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Therefore, in order to prevent the potential suffering that children can face the audience is more

likely to be in support of Anderson's concept of the value of marriage and cause for it because of

the fact that he explains that an individual is more likely to commit or take care of something, in

this case, a child, if they already showcase commitment in other affairs related to the subject

which in this case would be marriage.

Although Anderson does effectively explain the high social costs of not knowing the

value or cause for marriage, his view does become bias due to the fact that he states that

marriage should not include sexually open, multiple-partner, or by-design-temporary marriages.

Anderson provides evidence on the high social costs of failing to understand the value and the

meaning of marriage by using statistics like the one from Utah state university scholar David

Schramm that "estimated that divorce alone costs federal, state, and local governments $33

billion each year"(np.1). He does this in order to reveal that because individuals don't value

marriage and understand its importance, they are more likely to separate, creating the problem of

high social costs due to divorce. However, when Anderson provides examples of revisionist

views on marriage, an article on wed lease states how convenient and helpful wed leases can be

due to the fact that married couples can exit their marriages on whatever time frame they choose

without having to deal with "messiness of divorce" (np.1), Anderon still states that he opposes

the idea of the wed lease along with other revisionist ideas like throuples and monogamous. This

proves that Anderson simply favors the martial norms of monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and

permeance over monogamous and temporary relationships without having reasonable proof that

monogamous and design temporary marriages cause or are more likely to cause high social costs

than marriages that are based on monogamy and sexual exclusivity. Anderson does, however,

create strong points in his argument by repetitively indulging on how marriage affects children.
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Anderson gains the audience support not only by indulging in the pain children can endure for

not having a parent figure around, but he also uses logos to provide the statistic that marriage

"reduces the probability of child poverty by 80 percent"(np.1) revealing positive effects of

marriage. In stating this the audience can realize that one of the reasons marriages are beneficial

is to protect the children in society. Anderson could have, however, in his article, provided more

specific evidence of why monogamous relationships, throuples, and wed leases negatively affect

society. He indulges heavily on why marriage is important, but he fails to inform his audience on

what negative effects it truly has when it comes to social costs.

Ryan Anderson overall wants society after being informed on why marriage is so

significant to bring back the previous principles of marriage which would include sexual

complementarity, monogamy, exclusivity, and permanence, and promote societal welfare. He

does include very reasonable points on the significance of marriage which will pull many readers

in favor of his argument however I believe he did not effectively provide his reasoning on why

marriage must be built on those specific principles which can be a major alteration in the

effectiveness of his article.

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Work cited

Anderson, Ryan “The Social Costs of Abandoning the Meaning of Marriage” The

Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/the-social-

costs-abandoning-the-meaning-marriage. Accessed 15 September 2021.