New York High Court Rejects Same-Sex Marriage
Here is the relevant part of the decision:
We conclude, however, that there are at least two grounds that rationally support the limitation on marriage that the Legislature has enacted. Others have been advanced, but we will discuss only these two, both of which are derived from the undisputed assumption that marriage is important to the welfare of children.First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true.
…
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.
…
There is a second reason: The Legislature could rationally believe that it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father. Intuition and experience suggest that a child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like.
Bottom line, straights can’t be trusted, and gays don’t need to be trusted. We need to bribe straights into getting married precisely because they might not want to, and we need not afford gays the opportunity to marry, precisely because they do want to.
This is what passes as informed jurisprudence in New York State.
The fact that limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, because “it’s all about the children,” is both underinclusive (we don’t limit straight marriage to fertile couples, we don’t compel straight couples to bear children, nor do we summarily dissolve straight marriages that do not result in children) and overinclusive (gays have children too, just not by accident), means nothing. Absolutely nothing.
This is what passes as informed jurisprudence in New York State.
Now that the bromide of “it’s all about the children” has been refuted at every turn, defenders of traditional bigotry now have a new twist: “it’s all about accidental children.”
This is what passes as informed jurisprudence in New York State.
Note: The vote was 4-2. Chief Judge Kaye has a lengthy dissent that I look forward to reading.
I may or may not have more later.
The lead case is Hernandez v. Robles, No. 86 (NYS Court of Appeals, July 6, 2006)
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What we need is a lovestruck hermaphrodite. (Now there's a sentence you don't see very often!)
I can't tell you how many times I've heard that the definition of marriage as one man and one woman doesn't deny anyone the ability to get married.
If we could get a hermaphrodite to challenge that stance, the courts would HAVE to rule that such a person is being denied equal protection under the law.
Any argument that starts with "despite the advances of science" will clearly be lacking, but wow, this is beyond any sense. Because it's now all about the children, when will divorce be outlawed in the state of New York for any married couple with children? Isn't that an obvious extension?
And why the clear love of the group protection of children rather than individual families? Those four judges just spat on every gay or lesbian parent.
It's irrational for the court to be throwing around "rational" in defending these possible legislative decisions. Unreal. The whole country has gone mad.
Where else was she cited?
I noticied how important her dissent was to the Connecticut decision alongside all the rationales cited from the California decision.