Of course this initiative won’t be approved by the voters, but will it succeed in its obvious real purpose – reframing the terms of debate on the gay-marriage issue?
I cannot help but feel that this plays right into the hands of the opposition to gay marriages: “See, we told you all along that they were trying to destroy marriage!”
As half of a (quite valid) childless heterosexual marriage that supports SSM, I’m mordantly amused by the point behind it, but I’m afraid it will in fact backfire.
Eh. I think the only people who would swallow that line are the sort who are not open to rational persuasion on the subject of gay rights in the first place.
It’ll never get on the ballot. I can’t believe **BG **would take this seriously enough to start a thread on it. Must be a slow day in **BG **thread-starting world…
If I lived in Washington I’d sign it purely for the entertainment value it’d bring. It might force conservatives to explain why heterosexual childless marriages are allowable but childless gay marriages are not.
Pro-gay-marriage folks are trying to put this on the ballot in hopes it will inspire anti-gay-marriage people to say, “No, no, no, you can’t do that! You don’t have to have children for a marriage to be viable, you only have to be able to have children.” And then the pro-gay-marriage people can try to put an issue on the ballot saying that only people CAPABLE of making babies can get married, and then the anti-gay-marriage people (among whom are many middle-aged and elderly types who marry again after losing a first spouse) will say, “No, no, no, you can’t do that!” The purpose of all this being to make the anti-gay-marriage people move away from their stance that sex is for reproduction, which is why we get married in the first place.
The rebuttal I’ve heard from some is that hetero couples that choose not to have children MAY change their mind and might produce children anyway.
Short of a full hysterectomy, aren’t even what we would call infertile couples capable of having a child, even if the possibility is very, very small? (in the majority of cases anyway) That is why they would say it is different I would imagine.
Antinor01, my parents’ marriage would have been annulled: I didn’t come along until after 4 years. My aunt and uncle never had children and not for lack of trying. Another aunt and uncle took 5 years for their first. SiL’s best friend was accused of infidelity when they went to the gyne after 2 years trying for their second; according to the gyne, it would be impossible to get a child with such a low sperm count - it only takes one but dang, that gyne almost got her eyes teared out by this 4’10" fury.
The proposal is completely unjust to the people in my previous paragraph. Yep. That’s its point.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone state that homosexuals should be excluded from marriage on the sole basis that they cannot conceive children. I’m sure you can find an anti-homosexual marriage proponent who basis his belief mainly on the having children angle but I doubt you’ll find many.
Sorry, this does seem like a particularly clever way of sticking it to those against homosexual marriages. In fact, it looks like an excellent way to alienate those who might be on the fence.
Marc, I could introduce you to several thousands, lemme know if you ever come to Spain. They always look like this :dubious: and do a good imitation of a carp when I ask them whether people over a certain age or with certain health problems should not be allowed to marry. It came up a lot for example when Stephen Hawkins got married to his current wife.
The whole point of the initiative is that the state Supreme Court put into their opinion supporting the Defense of Marriage Act that (extreme paraphrasing on my part) it’s in the state’s interest to support people having children, and since gay couples (theoretically) can’t have children, then they can’t be married. The initiative is an attempt to put the court’s ruling into law, and then (hopefully) forcing the court to reverse itself.
I think this will backfire big time. Which I am glad about, as I do not advocate SSM (all other gay rights, yes). Actually, the best thing that could happen, from my standpoint, is that it passes. Even if it wasn’t quiclkly overturned it would cause such a backlash that SSM would be off the table for 20 years, and more and more laws would easily pass prohibiting the idea. It would probably allow a federal marriage amendment to pass, as well. An unfortunate consequence I fear is that it will damage the more general gay rights movement in the process.
I doubt it, and for now I’ll refrain from asking why it would be so wonderful if more states banned gay marriage. But if it’s not likely to get on the ballot, it doesn’t matter.
I thought this was a bad idea, considering the backlash, until I read the column in the OP. I forgot that the Court used procreation as a defense, and somebody might as well point out that ridiculousness on the national scale.
How about senior women? My grandmother is 80. My grandfather died a decade ago. She isn’t the type to get remarried, but had she, its unlikely that anyone would consider that there would be even a small chance of her procreating (at least not without outside help, which is an option available to homosexual couples).
My grandfather (the other side) lost his wife when he was in his early fifties (I was a baby). He remarried a woman who never had children and was also in her fifties (she happened to also be his late wife’s sister, but that is a different story). She’d had a complete hysterectomy in her 30s.
I know a number of heterosexual couples who are incapabile of having a child - or where they are incapable of having a child survive. A couple of diabetics with diabetes so severe that they can’t risk a pregancy. A friend with kidney disease who would kill herself. A couple who have enough genetic bad stuff that they are sure the combination of their genes would not produce healthy children.
Washington State Defense of Marriage Alliance.