How is gay marriage a threat to traditional marriage? No procreation- if you can’t “in principle” procreate you can’t get married. He carves it in such a way that infertile people can still get married- that’s “incidental”.
He and my aunt have been married for nearly 35 years and chose not to have kids for a variety of reasons. My uncle was already voting against Lee Newcom in McLean County and I think we can add the Senate race to it too. I may post his reaction when I talk to him over the weekend.
Has Keyes informed Bob and Liz Dole that their marriage is illegitimate?
This is a good place to mention how inane the procreation argument is.
The legal argument here is that government has a compelling interest in encouraging procreation, correct?
A compelling interest in encouraging procreation that overrides an individual’s right to privacy?
Lots of young people should realize that the right to privacy (a constitutional fabrication–thank you very much Justice Douglas) allows them to go to the drug store, supermarket or restroom and buy condoms or other birth control device. At one time states were allowed to outlaw birth control–even for married couples. This case was decided in the last 40 years!
So for Keyes to suggest that the reason gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry is because of procreation–he’s really using a legal argument against your right to safe and effective birth control.
You don’t have to search too hard to find that many in the forefront of the anti-choice movement are also very opposed to birth control.
“Natural law” and all that.
Traditionally, marriage was encouraged by the state for pro-creation — taxpayers, the army, perpetuation of the state, etc., etc. all of these meant new people were needed.
Marriage also serves a legal purpose surrounding inheritance and private property. Upon death you could determine who got what…
Since to get married, you need a marriage license and some jursidictions require blood tests and the like, to argue that there is a privacy issue involved is going to be an uphill battle.
In sum, marriage between a man and woman was given a privleged position because the state received something out of the deal.
We’ve seen some empirical evidence that gay marriage has devalued marriage in Northern Europe, but it is preliminary at best.
To me, it seems that it is incumbent on those wanting to change tradition (even in the form of laws) to show the error in society’s ways. There is a judgement that has to be made on what state and society gains from gay marriage. That so and so is a bigot and that people are in looovvveee just don’t cross that threshold for me…
I know of no evidence that marriage is devalued in Northern Europe. But more importantly, the standards for gays and lesbians should be a simple standard of how does their sexual orientation affect others. It doesn’t. As such it should be considered a suspect classification. There is no reason their status should affect what kind of job they do, what kind of place they live in, or who they should be able to enter into a similar contractual relationship with in terms of personal life.
Oooh, of all the “arguments” against gay marriage, this one makes me the maddest. It’s a slap in the face to my husband and me, because we’ve been married almost 15 years, straight out of college, *in a church,* and we are childless by choice.
I’m confused about how marriage could be devalued by anything other than adultery, polygamy, or divorce.