Humor

This has my support, my signature if I find someone canvassing for signatures, and my vote if it should actually make it to the ballot: the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance‘s Initiative 957.

If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:

• add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another” to the legal definition of marriage;
• require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
• require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;”
• establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
• make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.

Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.

I’m in. Of course, other people aren’t so excited…

Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage & Children, agreed with [I-957 filer Gregory] Gadow’s group on at least one point about the initiative: “It’s absurd,” she said.

Haskins said opponents of same-sex marriage “have never said that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation.”

“When we talk about defending the institution of marriage, we’re talking about the union of a man and a woman,” she said. “Some of those unions produce children and some of them don’t.”

With I-957, “you’re dictating people’s choices in a way that is utterly ridiculous,” she said.

Which, of course, is the point.

The [Washington State Supreme Court majority] opinion [upholding Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage] written by Justice Barbara Madsen concluded that “limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the state’s interests in procreation and encouraging families with a mother and father and children biologically related to both.”

Gadow said the argument is unfair when you’re dealing with same-sex couples who are unable to have children together.

“What we are trying to do is display the discrimination that is at the heart of last year’s ruling,” he said.

I’d add that the language as written is also unfair to heterosexual couples who can’t (or for any reason prefer not to) have children, hetero- or homosexual couples who adopt, or any other combination or situation you can come up with that’s not the husband, wife, and two point five children scenario. I was disgusted with the ruling them, I still am, and I’m quite amused by I-957’s approach to poking at the issue.

Sign me up!