Why Straight People Should Be Insulted by Arguments Against Gay Marriage (UPDATED)
How will people breed without the government's help?
The Supreme Court is scheduled to decide today whether it will hear cases connected to both California's Proposition 8 and the federal government's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In both cases, appeals courts have tossed out the marriage bans, so if the court refuses to hear them, gay marriage recognition will become legal in California and the federal government will have to recognize gay marriages in states where it is legally recognized. (Personally, I can't imagine the Supreme Court not taking up the DOMA case, but Prop. 8 is much harder to predict)
Anyway, while everybody was focused on these cases, a federal judge in Nevada bucked the current trend and ruled that Nevada does have the authority to ban recognition of gay marriage (full ruling available at the linked BuzzFeed story).
Furthermore Judge Robert C. Jones has trotted out the more tiresome social-conservative, big-government arguments to allow for the ban. Procreation is required for the species to survive. Ergo, the government has a legitimate interest in controlling whose marriages are recognized. Otherwise we won't have families! Without the government stamp, people will stop getting married and mankind will be doomed. Doomed!
Human beings are created through the conjugation of one man and one woman. The percentage of human beings conceived through non-traditional methods is minuscule, and adoption, the form of child-rearing in which same-sex couples may typically participate together, is not an alternative means of creating children, but rather a social backstop for when traditional biological families fail. The perpetuation of the human race depends upon traditional procreation between men and women. …
Should that institution be expanded to include same-sex couples with the state's imprimatur, it is conceivable that a meaningful percentage of heterosexual persons would cease to value the civil institution as highly as they previously had and hence enter into it less frequently, opting for purely private ceremonies, if any, whether religious or secular, but in any case without civil sanction, because they no longer wish to be associated with the civil institution as redefined, leading to an increased percentage of out-of-wedlock children, single-parent families, difficulties in property disputes after the dissolution of what amount to common law marriages in a state where such marriages are not recognized, or other unforeseen consequences
I'm gay, so I see the marriage fight in certain ways. But I'm also a libertarian, so, isn't that argument extremely insulting to straight people? The judge actually suggests that straight people would be so upset about gay people getting married that they'll stop doing it themselves!
What were you straight people doing before the government came along to tell you how to breed properly?
UPDATE: The Supreme Court did not make any announcements on the gay marriage cases it's considering. There may be an announcement Monday or the end of next week.
