I can't claim any special understanding of the law beyond what I learned in an excellent Philosophy of Law course at the University of Montana in 1994. To do so would not be far off from saying that I know a lot about Russia because I can see it from my house. Not that I can see Russia from my house and, actually, I do know more about Russia than most people, but that's not where I was going with this. Where was I going with this?
Oh right, I was going to remark on the line of argument being made in the Prop 8 trial going on in California. According to the Sacramento Bee, attorneys defending California's same-sex marriage ban are arguing that "the fundamental purpose of marriage is procreation, to raise children in an 'intact' family and that same-sex marriage could erode that purpose."
As I said to Lynn in her Facebook thread about the trial, OMGWTFBBQ?
The fundamental purpose of marriage is procreation? Really?
This was not made clear to me at any point during the process of getting married. I was never asked, "Do you and your husband intend to have children?" Not once. I was asked to swear that we were not first cousins and, indeed, that I was a woman and he was a man. But our childbearing plans were not a line of inquiry.
Duh.
Because everybody and their dog and box turtle (whom they will logically want to marry if gay marriage is allowed, despite the difference between a grown, consenting adult and a reptile) would be up in arms if there were a required "breeding test" before couples got to the altar. It would seem logical to me that if you require some people to pass a breeding test and not others, that is pretty much the definition of discrimination. Am I missing something?
Perhaps the great legal scholars of the anti-gay right can enlighten me on this one. Because otherwise I know a lot of invalid marriages running around. Hell, my own would have been invalid for almost five years, assuming that one had to produce a child within the requisite nine months of the honeymoon under this new regime. Somehow I don't think that's the direction we want to be going, although it does bring up all kinds of hypotheticals:
- Would post-menopausal women be allowed to get married?
- Would everyone wanting to get married have to be tested for fertility and barred if they were shown to be infertile?
- How about people with disabilities that affect their reproductive capabilities?
- How quickly would you have to have a child to "validate" your marriage?
- Would one child be sufficient to prove that validity?
- What about people who just don't want to have kids? Are they to be forced?
Honestly, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the problems with this line of argument. Am I wrong here? Please hurry with the explanations, oh California defense attorneys, because I'm a busy woman with further procreating to do, apparently. Plus, Chip, the box turtle, and I have been waiting a long time to solemnize our relationship and you're really slowing things down.