daswig

At the risk of being branded a "bigot" again, I'm going to wade back in. You list (or cut and paste) a whole bunch of incentives for people to get married/benefits of being married. Not heterosexual people, not homosexual people, but people in general (this is important because some homosexuals do indeed currently get married to members of the opposite sex and are reaping the state-granted benefits of marriage, and they've been doing so since marriage came into existence).

Looking at your list, you'd think that the state had some "compelling governmental interest" to encourage people to get married. Otherwise, why would they be in the marriage game at all? I mean isn't marriage a religious institution that's been recognized by the State? I wonder what it could be.... Hmm...The courts have said CHILDREN. Yes, indeed, the State has been deemed to have a "compelling governmental interest" (it's "legalese", I know, but hey, sometimes you have to use the words that the courts have used to get the idea across) to encourage people to procreate, and to create and encourage the formation and continuation of stable homes for those children, so that the species does not disappear or begin turning out even larger hordes of poorly socialized kids that the State then has to either care for or incarcerate.

Now we undoubtedly could all agree that the State has no business checking up on the health of people who want to be married, right? (Or am I stepping on some unknown psychic landmine with this assumption? Only time will tell.) So the State can't check the fertility of the parents before they get married, since that would be an unwarranted medical intrusion, right?

And we'd all most likely agree that the State couldn't require actual live offspring from a union before such a union became "legally blessed", right? Therefore, requiring statements of intent to procreate is out, right? So what do they do to encourage people to breed within the confines of a long-term stable family structure? They offer "bennies". No, not the pharmaceutical kind, the financial incentive kind (if this offends the pro-drug crowd, I apologize in advance. I LIKE drugs, and take as many as my physician prescribes for me, so PLEASE DON'T LYNCH ME for saying this even in a figurative sense, 'k???).

Now why would there be a need for the State to offer bennies to get people to breed within a structure of a married family? Could it be that a conventionally structured family is one of the most cost-effective and proven ways (in an across the board sense) of producing healthy, well socialized future adults? Could it be that so-called "broken homes" or "single-parent homes" don't do as good a job (in an across the board sense) of raising healthy, well socialized future adults? Are there exceptions to this? Sure. But as a rule, this "conventional wisdom" appears to hold true.

So, the State recognizes marriage between couples who potentially might be able to breed in an effort to encourage behavior that is beneficial to society as a whole (the conception and raising of children who will become productive, well adjusted members of society, as opposed to kids who end up in jail at State expense because they come from a broken home). You'll notice that in most States, the husband of a woman who gives birth is presumed to be the father of the child even if he is not, which is how you end up with situations where the husband of an adulterous wife ends up paying child support for a child that he is not the biological father of. The State does not recognize marriages because, well, gosh, it gives us warm fuzzy feelings to see people married, and weddings stimulate the flower and wedding-cake industries, and they SURE as hell don't recognize it to get the 15 bucks.

It's a simple "carrot and stick" approach. The State offers the carrot (bennies) to get people to form long-term breeding pair families, and the stick (loss of marriage benefits, plus alimony, child support, social stigma, et cetera) to keep people from breaking up their families. This is why divorce rules differ in many states between married couples who have produced offspring and married couples that haven't produced offspring. It's generally a longer process to dissolve a marriage with kids involved than one without kids involved, not because it has to be, but because, once again, the State has a "compelling governmental interest" in keeping these family units together if it's at all possible. And people who breed outside of the confines of marriage generally do not get the same level of bennies from the government that people who breed within the confines of marriage do, right?

Are you with me so far?

Now we get into the whole gay marriage issue. Now obviously, same sex couples generally can not produce offspring between the two parties of the marriage, right? (This isn't "bigotry", it's "biology".) And since marriages of same-sex couples cannot produce children without some intervening third party (and incidentally, for the parties to produce offspring, there would have to be adultery with a person of another gender, something the State doesn't want to encourage, probably because of the "bleed-over" affect saying "adultery is OK in our book if it produces children!" would have amongst heterosexual couples, and remember, the State has a "compelling governmental interest" in encouraging that NOT to happen, the idea is to produce children who then live with both biological parents, rather than to encourage the production of children through infidelity, which may very well result in the dissolution of the marriage) , why would the government want to provide incentives to form such families or to keep such families together? What, exactly, is the "compelling governmental interest" that would allow the State to get involved in a religious issue and recognize same-sex marriages? It's not enough to simply say "heterosexual couples get bennies for being married, so homosexual couples should be able to marry and get the same bennies", since the bennies are there not "just because", but rather to encourage a certain specific conduct (being a married couple in a stable long-term relationship) which is geared towards producing a concrete biological result (children) that are socially well adjusted. And please keep in mind that the carrot isn't there for married heterosexual couples permanently....if they stop the conduct that the bennies are there to encourage (ie being married to promote breeding and provide a stable home environment for those kids) the bennies disappear.