I am as socially conservative as you in how I choose to live. But I am not socially authoritarian. The more things you want a state to regulate the bigger it must be. And history shows us that big states do more harm than the social ills you want them to suppress. THAT is where we differ. We could live as neighbours without ever scandalising each other I assure you!

You are a good man and I genuinely like to agree with you, but I struggle here. To agree "we were made" for X and Y, would require, I think, my agreement on the existence of a Maker. I would like to agree on that, but I can't. Friends of faith are praying that I may be able to one day.

The best I can say for now is that it is objectively better for children to be brought up in a marriage staffed by both major varieties of human. I already went so far as to say that I would not willingly have brought children up in any other way. That's not always a choice and one of my best friends in the world is womanfully, with great love and noble intent bringing up a splendid young gent of whom I am very fond entirely on her own. It wasn't her first choice but she's doing her best and I have high hopes he's going to turn out well despite the disadvantage of having no full-time male role model. Decent males of her acquaintance are deputising when they can. One of them is me and I only wish she lived closer so I could do it more. Given your disagreement with my ideas you may be happy he's not over-exposed to my role model!

Other friends are doing their best in sub-optimal family circumstances. Of the nature, nurture and free-will tripod, one or more leg is wonky for their children but there's plenty of evidence from children brought up in worse circumstances that a one-legged tripod consisting of just the child's free will can produce good results.

For example I knew one of two brothers brought up by a tragically useless single mother in appalling circumstances. With no educational or financial advantages, he made a decision to rise above his upbringing. Before he died he raised a good family. His children have no valid complaints of disadvantage and his grandchildren are now prospering too. His brother on the other hand turned out as a good Social Justice Warrior would have predicted - drugs and crime and dissolution. There were no differences in their circumstances or upbringing. One just accepted he was a victim and the other refused.

I don't deny life is unfair and that certain starts in life offer advantages. I simply hold robustly to the practical view that every sane and healthy man has a powerful choice in how to play the cards he's dealt. All a poor child in the United States has to do to join the ranks of the world's lucky is to finish high school and not conceive a child until married and able to support one. I doubt the bar is any higher in Britain or any other Western country. That's in anyone's grasp if he is not discouraged by people who tell him that he's a hopeless victim. The greatest evil Leftists do is tell young people they have no chance because of their class background, sex, sexual preferences or ethnicity.

Legislating for virtue is pointless. Firstly legislation is essentially unvirtuous because it involves violence. Secondly legislators are no more (I would argue they are less) likely to be virtuous than any random parent. And thirdly, virtue compelled is not virtue at all. Good intentions matter and going through the motions of virtue is a vice. Marriage is not a magic spell. It's not a ritual incantation to be made every day over breakfast to invoke the protection of the gods. It is, as the order of service makes clear, a difficult thing and not to be undertaken lightly.

You cannot seriously be arguing that the imprimatur of a state will make a thing better than your God can on HIs own surely? The kind of "encouragement" a state can offer is weak stuff. If you marry because it buys you a tax relief, what kind of mother or father are you likely to be, for goodness sake?

Finally, my neighbour's child is important, yes. But I would be an hypocrite if I claimed s/he is as important to me as my own. I help my neighbour's child where I can, out of a natural inclination entirely unshaped by the state. Anyone who needs to be compelled by state violence to do what my nature inclines me to do is best kept well AWAY from children.

You're one of my most rigorously intellectual interlocutors, but you are making the common error of assuming the violence of the state can be directed to good ends. All non-defensive violence is bad. Government is a necessary evil and evils must be kept to an absolute minimum.

It is statistically correct that children thrive better if brought up in a marriage. That's how I chose to bring mine up and I would never have done so in another way. Such generalisations are useful in making ones own choices but not so much in inflicting them on others. Not every child is lucky enough to grow up in ideal conditions. That does not mean they are doomed. Children from the same environment often turn out very differently. There is nature, there is nurture and there is free will. For the most part, attempts to use the state to inflict ones ideals on others are likely to do more harm than good When the early Church converted European nations from the top down - evangelising their kings and having them impose the Church's world view on their subjects – it committed an error (you might say a sin). It gave the keys to the definition of a range of human relationships to the State, when they should have been matters for the humans involved in them (and their God and/or Church if appropriate). I am not a libertine. I value stable human relationships. I simply respect my fellow men enough (and have enough humility) NOT to believe I am entitled to inflict my views on others using state violence as my proxy. Nothing in my experience of life suggests to the contrary.