Thursday, February 08, 2007

Closing a Loophole

I’ve had the gay marriage debate with a number of people who, while supportive of the theory, try to find ways out of actually supporting it, largely due to religious reasons. Personally, I think it’s fine to object to an idea based on religious reasons, just be honest about. Disingenuous libertarians have posed their position as “I’m for equal rights for everyone, but I don’t think the state should be in the marriage business at all. Therefore I wont support gay marriage because, you know, more government”. This is wrong on a number of levels both morally and logically. What they’re really saying is, “I don’t support this, so I will hedge by making my support contingent on something very unlikely, the end of heterosexual marriage. That way I don’t look like a bigot, but don’t have to expose my actual opinions”. It seems however that bluff is going to be called:

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a “legitimate state interest” allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this “legitimate state interest,” it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage.
The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.


I completely and 100% support this effort, to the extent I am writing a generous check.
Look son! All the money your army scholarship will save me is going to a good purpose! to Freedom!!!

It will be interesting to see how people make a rational argument against this that can't be turned around and be for gay marriage.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The gay marriage debate and the abortion debate, to me, have at least one thing in common: the people who oppose them should not get to have an opinion. Could a bloated old white guy possibly know what it is like to suddenly find out you are unexpectedly pregnant? No. Nor can he know (theoretically) what it is like to be wholly committed to another person without all the rights and responsibilities of marriage. In neither case should this straight, non-childbearing man get to make a decision. Unless you are Dick Cheney, who is bloated and white and straight, but has a lesbian daughter, and who MIGHT just know the pain her daughter and her partner have been facing. Until you have walked a mile in my uterus, you do not have the right to tell me what to do with my body and until you have walked down the street holding your same sex partner's hand, do not preach about love.