A group called The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance is proposing to modify Washington state's marriage laws to better comport with a recent anti-gay-rights marriage ruling by the Washington state supreme court:
If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would... require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled.
Initiative 957 is actually the first of three planned initiatives; "The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony."
(I know that Lunkhead has already written a good diary about this, but this diary entry is mainly about rebutting a right-wing response I've seen in a few places, and so covers different material than Lunkhead did).
The Defense of Marriage Alliance ("DOMA" - hee hee) website explains:
Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitutional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.
I don't know if this is politically wise or foolish, but I do think it's hilarious. Elizabeth at Family Scholars doesn't agree:
Absurd. No one says marriage exists for the "sole" purpose of procreation. But some of us do say that gutting marriage of any legal or cultural relevance to encouraging men and women who make babies together to stick together for the sake of the baby and each other — that gutting marriage of that could be a very bad thing for children overall.
But there's no logical reason to believe that state recognition of same-sex marriages would have that effect, any more than state recognition of infertile couples' marriages currently has that effect. Recognizing same-sex marriage logically requires rejecting the view that heterosexual reproduction is the sole purpose of marriage; but it doesn't require rejecting the view that encouraging women and men to become committed parents who stick together is one purpose of marriage.
Elizabeth goes on:
Also a weird touch of envy that heterosexual sex MAKES BABIES.
Thank goodness queers have heterosexuals like Elizabeth around to use their magical gay-mind-reading powers to let us all know what queers are really thinking! Why, without heterosexuals like Elizabeth around to tell us what the gays are thinking but not saying, we might actually have to listen to what non-heterosexual people say! The horror, the horror!
But I really want to address Elizabeth's contention that "No one says marriage exists for the 'sole' purpose of procreation." If that's not precisely what anti-gay activists have been saying, they're certainly coming awfully close. Here's Elizabeth's friend Maggie Gallagher wrote, in a Weekly Standard piece entitled "What Marriage is For":
Marriage is the fundamental, cross-cultural institution for bridging the male-female divide so that children have loving, committed mothers and fathers. [...] The marriage idea is that children need mothers and fathers, that societies need babies, and that adults have an obligation to shape their sexual behavior so as to give their children stable families in which to grow up.
Next, here's what Margaret Somerville -- one of the best-known and best-respected academic opponents of equal marriage rights -- says marriage is for (pdf link):
Through marriage our society marks out the relationship of two people who will together transmit human life to the next generation and nurture and protect that life. By institutionalizing the relationship that has the inherent capacity to transmit life — that between a man and a woman — marriage symbolizes and engenders respect for the transmission of human life.
Here's what On Lawn -- who frequently commented in support of Elizabeth's anti-marriage-equality views, back when Elizabeth's blog accepted comments -- wrote on his blog yesterday:
It is the 800lb gorilla in the room that marriage is about responsible procreation. Every benefit and provision of it intersects in that single purpose.
Next, here's what the Family Research Council blog says:
"Is marriage solely for the purpose of creation?" My tentative answer: Yes and no. I agree with natural law thinker Robert George, who says, "Here is the core of the traditional understanding: Marriage is a two-in-one-flesh communion of person that is consummated and actualized by acts that are reproductive in type, whether or not they are reproductive in effect..." He adds: "Although not all reproductive-type acts are marital, there can be no marital act that is not reproductive in type."
A number of factors could prevent a married couple from having a child within three years (e.g., what if the child is stillborn?) so it would be unfair to penalize them for something that is beyond their control. Instead, a more reasonable criteria should be established that is based on actions that are solely within their power. For example, all couples who wish to marry--both gay and straight--must be willing and able to engage in "marital acts", acts that are reproductive in type. To paraphrase the WA-DOMA, those couples who cannot or will not engage in marital acts that are reproductive in type should equally be barred from marriage.
Blogger Thomas Shawn:
Human nature defines the properties of marriage as between a man and a woman with the primary purpose of procreation and the education of children.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:
Marriage exists so that the spouses might grow in mutual love and, by the generosity of their love, bring children into the world and serve life fully.
These are hardly unique or even unusual examples, and many of them represent the intellectual leadership of the anti-equality movement. The best thing that can be said in defense of Elizabeth's statement is that not all these people are saying that procreation is the "sole" purpose of marriage; there's some wiggle about whether these folks consider reproduction the "sole" purpose or merely the "primary" purpose.
But if Elizabeth's argument is based on the word "sole," then Elizabeth's case is awfully weak. After all, DOMA's argument doesn't change much if we strike the word "sole" and stick in "primary" instead. ("And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole primary purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.")
Other blogs yakking about this ballot proposal: Shakespeare's Sister, Bring It On!, Pam's House Blend, Goosing the Antithesis, Lunkhead's Diary, Eclectism, Feministing, and the Republic of T.
Crossposted on "Alas, a Blog."