The secular interest is in preserving the best, most enviable environment for raising children. This, one could argue, is society’s defense (or offense) against itself.
You’d have to show that it is in fact the best environment, or at least that SS couples are so much worse that in general they are unsuited to raising kids.
Is there some strong evidence that same-sex couples are not every bit as good at raising their children as opposite-sex couples? I haven’t followed all the cases closely but out here when the “Defense of Proposition 8” folks had their time in court, they tried to make that claim. As the judge’s decision showed, not only did they fail to present any evidence backing that assertion up, their own evidence actually indicated just the opposite (SS couples were as good if not better at raising their kids as OS couples).
Bos 2007 and 2010 (or 11, I forget) found that lesbian couples were either just as adept or more so at raising children than a male and female couple. If we’re just going by the evidence, women should be forced into lesbian relationships. Won’t someone please think of the children?
Anyway, how will preventing the gays from marrying cause more married couples to stick together or stop having premarital sex or stop dying or any other myriad of things that cause kids to be raised in nuclear free homes? Or, for that matter, stop those sneaky gays from kidnapping children and raising them in their devious unenviable fashion?
You’ve also just ascribed a value to marriage that it doesn’t have, namely to have children. Marriage is simply the union of two people, having children is secondary (and actually unrelated) to that.
The conflating of marriage as necessary for children is also a religious one, so if that was the thinking underpinning DOMA then you’ve just confirmed that it was in fact a religiously motivated law.
I’m somewhat baffled that “marriage” as a concept is controlled by the government rather than by individual religious institutions in the first place. I have no problems with restrictions on marriage. I do have problems with government-mandated restrictions on marriage.
How does enviability enter into the discussion? I am unaware of any law, anywhere, that is justified by its proponents because of the necessity to provoke feelings of envy.
I can make no sense whatever of what hoopified just said, but my understanding is that the purported* secular purpose of DOMA is to limit government recognition and support to the one type of union Congress (and thus, The People) thinks is optimal, unless an individual state decides otherwise for itself. Assuming that one is on board with the idea of Congress making these kinds of decisions in the first place, that doesn’t seem crazy.
I don’t find that reasoning persuasive in the least, but there it is.
*Der Trihs is right about what the Act’s actual purpose is.
What if you aren’t religious? It’s religion, not government that shouldn’t have anything to do with marriage. Including imposing its religious dogma on who can and can’t get married by using the government.
Neither can many straight marriages. If that’s the reasoning, then infertile couples shouldn’t be allowed marriage, and women who reach menopause should suffer forcible divorce. But of course, since that doesn’t punish homosexuals it won’t happen.
Depends on how micro is micro. Having to do full fertility testing before marriage would be much more micro. Just saying “man and woman? okay” is a bit more macro.
Okay. So infertile heterosexual couples should also be targeted by the DOMA.
I didn’t get a vasectomy until our second child was born. My Wife has since reached menopause. Both of our daughters are grown and out of the house. Does that mean we shouldn’t be married any longer?