In today’s news, Connecticut becomes the third state (after Massachusetts and California) to allow gay marriages. While I don’t feel like going into my personal views on the topic, I do have a few things to say about the quoted arguments of one of the dissenting justices.
The following is a quote from the Yahoo! news article linked above:
Justice Peter T. Zarella wrote that he believes there is no fundamental right to same-sex marriage, and that the court’s majority failed to discuss the purpose of marriage laws, which he said is to “privilege and regulate procreative conduct.”
Zarella added, “The ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis in biology, not bigotry. If the state no longer has an interest in the regulation of procreation, then that is a decision for the legislature or the people of the state and not this court.”
Emphases are mine, but it’s important. First, this guy’s claiming that it’s the government’s job to privilege and regulate procreative conduct. What? Excuse me? What’s next, reproduction licenses? Last I looked, we aren’t Communist China, sir.
In the same sentence, he implies that a) the government’s job includes regulating the reproduction of citizens, and b) that the purpose of marriage is to facilitate reproduction.
I’m gonna call bullshit on both, thanks. The former is terrifying and highly anti-American in its implications. The latter is simply incorrect, unless we’re gonna start revoking marriage licenses from hetero couples who choose to neither have children nor adopt. Also, last I heard, we allow gays to adopt children, and most children from such households grow up just fine.
In the second paragraph, Zarella references “the ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.” Wrong. There are some widely-held misconceptions among many Americans, and this is one of them, right up there with a belief that marriage is an exclusively religious ceremony. Many very ancient definitions of marriage reference one man and several women, or vice versa…so if we’re going by “ancient definitions” maybe polygamy should have special legal protection, hmmm? In fact, marriages between one man and numerous women are still commonplace in such backwards, third world countries as…ummm…Kuwait, anybody? That’s a thousands-of-years-old tradition practiced continually for the last two or three millennia.
Last, biology has nothing to say on marriage, for or against. Saying that marriage has a basis in biology is ridiculous. Cheating has more of a biological basis than marriage, so why don’t we encourage that while we’re at it?
What the hell.