Marriage is about Successfully Raising Children

While I was typing up this comment:

The state has an interest in promoting the successful raising of children. If procreation mattered, state marriage laws would treat adoptive parents and their children differently than the way it treats biological parents and their children. But it does not. In fact it goes out of its way to treat both the same. As far as the state is concerned, it makes no difference where these children came from in the first place.

Since the state marriage laws treat adoptive parents and their children and biological parents and their children equally, it must treat same sex parents and their children equally as well.

I see Jesurgislac beat me with this post:

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how certain the opponents of civil marriage for same-sex couples are that the one thing marriage is not about is bringing up children together.

Many same-sex couples do have children: by adoption, by AID, or by previous marriages. None of these methods of having children are unique to same-sex couples - many mixed-sex couples have children the same way. No opposition to same-sex couples on the grounds that “they can’t have children” can be taken seriously unless the opposition is consistent in also opposing mixed-sex couples from marrying if they have children by adoption, by AID, or by previous marriages.

If it is intrinsically a good thing for children that their parents should be married, then same-sex couples must be allowed to marry because of the children: if it is intrinsically a good thing for society that it’s a cultural norm for parents to be married, then same-sex couples must be allowed to marry because otherwise, they disrupt the cultural norm as an unmarried couple with children.

If, on the other hand, the children don’t matter a whit, and it’s only the “sex integration” and “procreation” that matter - bringing a man and a woman together to conceive children - then there is actually no point to long-term mixed-sex marriage no more than there is to same-sex marriage.

It’s a problem, isn’t it. To most people, support bringing up children as a couple would be considered one of the most important aspects of marriage. But opponents of marriage for same-sex couples have got to oppose this idea and claim that the only thing that matters is the conception of legitimate children biologically related to both parents (F.Rottle’s “responsible procreation”) as important to marriage.

(The “sex integration” argument is perfectly circular, and not worth responding to: it amounts to saying “The state supports bringing a man and a woman together in marriage and that’s why the only state-sanctioned form of marriage ought to be mixed-sex.”)

It was so good, I stole it. Shame on me!