Reason to be proud, again!

[urbpan]

With today's news of Connecticut's Supreme Court decision, now all three of the states I've lived in allow same sex marriages. 3/50th of the way to equal rights in marriage, for Americans!

I'm pretty surprised that Connecticut got there before New York, but since most of the people in Connecticut work in NYC, New York shouldn't be far behind. It's so nice to feel proud of where I'm from every once in a while.

Comments

[droserary.livejournal.com]

New York's high court upheld the ban on gay marriage a few years ago, citing, of all things, the interest the state has in promoting one-man/one-woman marriages for the sake of maintaining population levels. ... Then Washington state jumped on the band wagon and used the same reasoning for its high court ruling. Bat shit crazy, yes?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is stupid. Find the average New Yorker and ask them if they think there are enough people living there yet. Breed more! The most densely packed major city in the country is dangerously underpopulated!

Then there's another issue: it seems to me that I've seen gay couples with children, not to mention unmarried straight people with children. So how again does gay marriage affect the population level?

[droserary.livejournal.com]

It's extremely silly. I may have paraphrased incorrectly, so read here:

We conclude, however, that there are at least two grounds that rationally support the limitation on marriage that the Legislature has enacted. Others have been advanced, but we will discuss only these two, both of which are derived from the undisputed assumption that marriage is important to the welfare of children.

First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement—in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits—to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.

The Legislature could find that this rationale for marriage does not apply with comparable force to same-sex couples. These couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in opposite-sex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally [*4]offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.

There is a second reason: The Legislature could rationally believe that it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father. Intuition and experience suggest that a child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like. It is obvious that there are exceptions to this general rule—some children who never know their fathers, or their{**7 NY3d at 360} mothers, do far better than some who grow up with parents of both sexes—but the Legislature could find that the general rule will usually hold.

Still crazy, yes?

Washington state was a little more specific:

Under this standard, DOMA is constitutional because the legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children's biological parents.

So, I was living in Washington State when it's high court came down with a similar ruling. And [insert deity] bless the ballot initiative process out there. One gentleman was so fed up with the ruling that he tried to get Initiative 957 on the ballot in 2007. It failed to get the proper number of signatures, but it was genius in its mocking tone of the high court ruling. If enacted, it would have followed the intent of the court by restricting marriage to those willing and able to have children and by absolving the marriage after three years if no children had been produced.

Text of I-957 for your amusement.

Sorry for the long reply/spamming your entry ;-)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Not at all, I appreciate it.

The logic there is still stupid.

The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in opposite-sex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally [*4]offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.

This seems to me like an argument FOR same sex marriages only.

I really see two ways that this should break, eventually: Marriage is legalized for all adults, and gay or straight doesn't enter into it any more; or the State gets out of the marriage business altogether--it seems to me a clear violation of separation of church and state for any government to honor any marriage with tax breaks etc. Civil Unions for everybody! Anyone can get married at their church, but the state isn't allowed to recognize anything but civil unions, gay or straight.

Now to tackle polyamorous marriages....