GOODRIDGE LINK ROUNDUP

Will Saletan offers rhetorical advice on "selling" SSM by focusing on commitment: "Marriage is a broadly shared American value. You don't have to support homosexuality to support marriage. A politician can say, 'I'm pro-marriage. The issue isn't whether you're straight or gay. The issue is whether you support marriage.'"

National Review editorial: "...The erosion of marriage in our law and culture helped carry the Massachusetts court to its conclusion. The court recognizes that we have severed many of the links among marriage, sex, and the raising of children. But it does not follow from that indisputable premise that our law and culture do not link these things at all, or that they should not link them. A court could just as easily conclude that to the extent that the courts themselves have broken these links, they should go back and re-create them. It could just as easily conclude that the people of Massachusetts have conflicting and sometimes inconsistent views about the nature of marriage, and that the law may reflect that muddle without needing judicial correction. ..." Plus stuff on Democratic presidential candidates' fence-straddling, and federalism issues.

Ninomania, the blog of Regent University law professor David Wagner: Lawrence (US Supreme Court sodomy law decision) didn't play much of a role in the decision; benefits vs. obligations; do single parents need marital benefits too?

Sed Contra, the blog of Beyond Gay author David Morrison: "Third, there is all this stuff on benefits which are alleged to only be available to married couples. My former partner have been living together for well nigh on 17 years now. We jointly own our home and if, heaven forefend, one of us got hit by a bus and killed the ownership of the property would go automatically to the surviving partner. We each have substantial life insurance policies designed to insure, should anything happen, the money carefully invested can replace each of our incomes. We have medical power of attorney for each other which, among other things, guarantee or place at the bedside should it come to that. As for taxes, we would actually do worse, for tax purposes, if we filed jointly. Not to mention that he overall has better credit than I do and I can't imagine he would willingly (nor would I wish him to do so) take on my debts in the way that marriage provides. I suppose there is the issue of Social Security, but neither one of us is counting on that for our retirements. We each have each other covered in our wills." Plus stuff on childrearing and male-male couples' rates of/demands for sexual fidelity.

University of Chicago political science professor Jacob Levy, blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy, poses a hypothetical question: "Suppose that a state legislature forbade recognition of, or even (on the model of the polygamy statutes) criminalized, marriages between persons at least one of whom was known to be infertile. Suppose that it did so for the stated purpose of affirming the societal commitment to marriage's cerntral function as the primary site of childrearing.

"Would such a statute be constitutional (under the federal or most state constitutions), according to the jurisprudential theories of those most strongly opposed to the Massachusetts case?"

(Eve adds that you can get a pretty good sense of what a response to this question might look like here.)
posted by Eve at 8:13 PM | link

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