CALIFORNIA RULING: Andrew Sullivan replies to National Review

Here's an argument made against the logic of Judge Richard Kramer's decision in California:

Under any set of marriage laws, the fit between the laws' purpose and the eligibility criteria they establish will be somewhat loose. Are the laws there to promote loving relationships? Well, the law doesn't require that the partners in a marriage love each other. Do they promote the formation of stable households where the partners look out for each other? Well, not every married couple lives together, and it is an "obvious social reality" that not every cohabiting couple is married. This kind of pseudo-rationalism would undermine any marriage law at all.

The reason this doesn't persuade me is that no one is using any of these actual, not-always-present aspects of civil marriage to deny anyone's right to marry. No one, so far as I know, is saying that we should bar couples from civil marriages because they are not in love or not cohabiting or any other criterion. But they are saying that couples who do not or cannot procreate should be barred from marriage -- on those grounds alone. All Kramer is saying is that current marriage laws have no such exception, and that using that exception to exclude one group of non-procreative couples (the gay ones) rather than another non-procreative group (the straight ones) makes no logical sense. Especially when many lesbian (and some gay ones) marriages have biological children, and some straight ones have adopted kids. How does NRO defend that distinction?

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posted by Eve at 7:19 PM | link

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