Posted by
SDS on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 11:31:58 AM
One more time. The issue presented to California voters by Proposition 8 was NOT what marriages may be performed but WAS what marriages will be recogized. The Metropolitan Community Church, which has been performing same sex marriages for 30 years can continue to do so. So long as the minister doesn't say, "by the power vested in me by the State of California", everything will be hunky dory and there will be no jackbooted thugs disrupting the ceremony.
State recognition or approval of marriages serves an important governmental interest-- the creation of a new generation of taxpayers. Seriously. It is about the continuation of the species and the continuation of the society. Only a man and a woman can make a baby. That's biology, not bigotry. The state, society, will not survive without babies. And all of the evidence of 5000 years of civilization tells us that the optimal environment for raising a baby is the marriage of a man and a woman.
Children of both sexes benefit enormously from having both a male and a female role model. Doubtless children will survive without the presence of one of each, but statistical evidence shows they are more likely to do well with one of each.
State laws prohibit me from marrying anyone under the age of 16. I also can't marry my first cousin, brother, sister, father or son. I can't marry anyone who has married someone else and not divorced.
These rules are rational because all of them protect children (hence adoption of an age of consent) and prevent genetic inbreeding. It is also the considered opinion of our society ( see United States v. Reynolds) that multiple marriage is not good for women or children. And there is some evidence of that fact. Where there is only one husband with multiple wives and children, many end up going on welfare and the children see very little of their father.
Marriage, traditionally, has been as much about children as it has been about love. Not all opposite sex marriages will produce children, but NO same sex marriages will.
Nearly every benefit conferred by government action on married couples relates to the expectation that there will be or have been children. Spouses are able to collect on their spouse's social security contributions because the legislature expected that many women would have stayed home to raise children. The government wanted to provide a compensating benefit to women who stayed out of the workforce to raise children. The provisions of family health care benefits, again, was premised on a family model where dad went out to work and mom stayed home to take care of the children.
It is important to return the idea of marriage to the traditional idea that marriage is not just about mutual love of the partners but about providing a loving environment for the raising of children.
Marriage has been under assault from many directions for many years. Heterosexuals who change marital partners as if they were dance partners have done a great deal of damage. The new society idea that you get divorced if you are not "in love" anymore and too bad for the children-- has done great damage to the idea of marriage. The approval of same sex marriage based on the idea that any two people who are 'in love" should have a right to marriage would complete the destruction of marriage as a social institution for raising children.
People fall out of love. But decent people who have made a commitment to each other and their children stay married, and often discover that they can fall back in love again.
Marriage is about children and same sex couples cannot produce children. That's biology, not bigotry.