So New York decides not to extend marriage to same-sex couples on account of how the blanket of marriage seems too small to cover those darn impulsive straights. With three in the majority, one supporting, and two dissenting, the court argued that opposite-sex people need marriage because they can accidentally become parents at any time, while same-sex people cannot:
"These [same-sex] couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with
same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in opposite-sex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only."
I so wish this would mean that infertile couples now can't marry, and post-menopausal women can't marry, and impotent men can't marry. What if you couldn't marry if you need a surrogate, or in vitro fertilization, or fertility treatments of any kind? Or if you're old? Or if you need Viagra? Or if you've had a hysterectomy, or a vasectomy, or had your tubes tied? Or if you're on the pill? There'd be hell to pay, that's what.
It's clear that there's a willing blindness here about non-reproductive heterosexual sexual activity. After all, as the judges argue:
"A person's preference for the sort of sexual activity that cannot lead to the birth of children is relevant to the State's interest in fostering relationships that will serve children best."
The decision later takes up the question of excluding childless straight couples and dismisses it by arguing that such an exclusion would be too intrusive. Apparently, however, it's not intrusive to prohibit gay and lesbian parents from marrying. So the possible but unlikely children of childless het couples are more worthy of potential protection than the actual, living and breathing children of gay couples? Or is it just that straights are way more unstable, as a rule?
And does this mean that marriage will be extended to polygamists? After all, if anybody is engaging in sexual activities that could lead to accidental and impulsive conception, it's those Big Lovers, right?
I think it's time to hurl ourselves into the fray, and I encourage all of you to out every straight couple using birth control to your local officials and representatives. Those of you who prefer oral or anal sex, or do use birth control, or cannot conceive without performance-enhancing drugs or fertility treatments, you are on notice. Your parasitic enjoyment of the rights and privileges reserved for breeders is over, your queer status now about to be revealed as anti-American and selfish.
Meanwhile, we lezzie girls need to throw a sperm-wrestling party or two, while the homo boys can play "surrogate toss," if they can find women willing to be human horseshoes. These diversions should up the accidental factor enough to get us our piece of the marriage pie, and also prove an entertaining spectacle. Cheer up, queers. Summer picnics in the park are about to get a lot more interesting.
6 comments:
This is the most fucking absurd thing I have ever heard of. I'm dragging my sick tired ass downtown tonight to protest.
The court's opinion makes NO sense to me. As a child of divorced parents, and currently in a child-free marriage, I have no idea who they think they're protecting or against what. Good lord. These are ugly and dangerous times.
Am I wrong, is their reasoning that same-sex couples can't get married because they are too stable? That is what it seems like when they are talking about unstable relationships betweeen heteros needing marriage to firm them up.
I also hate the argument that same-sex couples can't get married because they can't accidentally get pregnant -- and thus adding another potential reason to later get divorced -- because they "had to" get married.
I had the same reaction to the news this week as in the last comment: Wait a minute, did they just say that same-sex relationships are inherently more stable and that's why marriage is for straights only? WTF?
A surrogate toss! Haha, right on! I think an adopted baby toss is better, personally. Like a bra sale at Filene's, gay men and lesbians can fight it out for any baby they can grab in the bin: size, colour, sex/gender, who cares? Just gimme one! Like Cabbage patch dolls!
Of course, this is the sort of humour boring "Family Forum" str8s point to and say, "tsk tsk!" But really, we *know* from heterosexualia, since most of us come from the belly of that beast. And we know that it is completely bullshit. Let's face it, most str8s have kids because *they can* ("penis fits vagina" in Paglia's dictum). There's typically not a lot of thought behind it. And we see the results every day in the horror stories of child abuse and neglect and dispair (my banal and horrifying favourites are when children are left in vanagons with tinted windows all day to roast like an Easy Bake Cake. Typically the parent will say something tragic like, "I forgot!" You forgot?! And these are the people we trust with our children? Not only to die a horrible death by heat, but in a vanagon no less! The shame, the shame!).
Like the "pro-life" debate, anti-marriage folks are focused on an issue to the detriment of its totality. "Pro-life," but we don't give two shits about what happens to it after it is slapped by the doc. Health care, education, oppotunities? Who cares! Or, more depressingly, "I don't want to pay for those people!" Marriage is a man and a woman, but we don't care to think of how *heterosexuals themselves* have made a shambles of the "institution."
One of my mother's favourite homophobic aphorisms (and she had some doozies!) was that LGBT identity "was selfish," primarily because we refused the responsibilities of heterosexualia (including baby making by accident, and the drudgery it involves). Now, as others have pointed out, LGBT folks want to be upstanding citizens, and we are denied.
Children, this is called a "tautology." Please write this term down in your primer, because we shall be studying it often in our survey of heteronormativity.
One thing I know for sure, we wouldn't forget our children in ugly vanagons! If anything, it would be a cute Mini Cooper or Jetta or Audi convertible, and then on top of it all we wouldn't forget them, firstly because we can't take them for granted ("Baby? What baby? Oh yea, that thing!"), and secondly, they make such good accessories! It would be like forgetting your purse! A note to single LGBT folks everywhere: get a baby and go to the ghetto! Honey, you'll be beating them off with a STICK!
Chiming in late, here...Yes, the whole thing DOES NOT COMPUTE. Good grief...Even the empiricists who study children of LGBT parents say that they are as emotionally healthy, if not more so, than children of hetero parents. I would htink that is the kind of evidence that would count for something among such types.
Quick, get that law degree and go kick some ass!
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