Thank you for posting this, Chris. You done good.

I don't know if anyone wants to hear my argument against Prop-8 and all related "Defense of Marriage Act" (NewSpeak* for "preventing same sex couples from marrying") measures. But, just in case it will help anyone in a face-to-face discussion to sway anyone's opinion, here it is:

The stated reason for Prop-8/DMA is that marriage is solely for bearing and raising children. If so, how come:

There is no requirement for married couples to have children? If you don't bear children within n years, why isn't your marriage automatically dissolved as null and void?

There is no fertility testing prior to getting a marriage license? If you can't bear children, and that includes you, Mrs. Widowed Senior Citizen, why should you be allowed to (re)marry?

Women can get pregnant and have babies without being married? Shock! Horror! Shouldn't nature respect our marriage laws?

People aren't forced to get married after conceiving a child out of wedlock? (well, I mean besides Levi and Bristol)

We allow divorce? If a couple has a child, the bearing and raising of which is the alleged purpose of marriage, then how can we allow that couple to get divorced before the child graduates college, gets a good job and settles down with his or her own family?

Some marriages involving bearing children are illegal? A man who fathers a child out of wedlock is not allowed to marry the mother, if he's already married. Why is that? How is that good for the child?

Yes, I know I'm being silly with the above, but no sillier than the proposition that marriage is a sacred institution solely for the purpose of raising children.

Children get born regardless of the paperwork of their parents. That's not the purpose of marriage. Marriage is irrelevant to whether a man and a woman bear a child. It's also irrelevant to whether or not people are going to make good parents. There are plenty of child-abuse horrorshows where there is a father and a mother in the home and they're married to each other. There are also loving families (seeming quite a few in Europe), where the parents decide they don't need any stinking official state or church license in order to live together, raise their children, and love each other, thank you very much.

Nobody wants to tell a church how to hold its sacraments or who to offer them to. That's the church's business. But, civil society doesn't even recognize ceremonial church marriage unless the civil paperwork is filed by a person authorized by the state to perform marriage per its requirements. Legally, marriage is not a religious institution. It's a civil one. And legally, there is no requirement for ANYONE to get married. Child welfare laws are written to operate pretty much the same regardless of the legal status of the parents.

So what is marriage, really? It's a purely optional "institution" for a couple to commit to their life-long love, mutual care and support, and companionship. That's the real and only reason for it.

__________________

*NewSpeak -- A form of misleading language used for purposes of political control and deception. Usually means nearly the exact opposite of what it first sounds like. Term coined by George Orwell in his novel, "1984".