My Liberal Identity:
You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.
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Marriage and Children
Many people who oppose same-sex marriage base their opposition on their belief that the purpose of marriage is to provide a legal structure in which to raise children, preferably of their own biological origin.
But I believe that issues concerning children and those concerning marriage should be viewed as separately for a couple of reasons.
One is the fact that people marry for a wide variety of reasons these days with almost no one marrying for the single purpose of raising children. People most often marry now for love and because they want to share their lives as a legally and socially recognized unit. And though many people would be happy to just live together to achieve those goals, they enter into legal marriage in order to gain the myriad legal benefits that come with making their union official.
Though most people do have children, it's almost never their sole reason for getting married in the first place. It's not as if couples who love one another but who don't want to or can't have children decide to simply remain friends because of that fact.
People who have no intention of having children, along with infertile people and people past reproductive age get married all the time, and no one is clamoring to remove their legal rights to do so -- as long as they are heterosexual, of course.
Secondly, the law no longer distinguishes between children born to married parents and those born to unmarried parents. "Illegitimacy" has not been a legal status for non-marital children since the late 60s. The law now focuses on how children relate to their parents, rather than so much on how their parents relate to each other.
Hence, this makes opposition to same sex marriage for the "marriage is for having children" reason moot and invalid.
And, of course, gays can raise children too. A friend of mine has
a partner who was in a heterosexual marriage that produced four children
before they divorced. Two lesbians seem to be raising them just fine. It's
hardly impossible to imagine a gay man and his partner in the same
position, raising children from a previous relationship (or, of course,
adopting, if people would let them). In cases like this, why don't the
people advocating family values thrilled that the child can have two
parents?
And just as a weird side-note, your blog wouldn't take my comment when I
said 3+5=8, but when I changed my answer to 7, it let me have my say!
I didn't mention the fact that gays can and do have children -- I figure
that was another can of worms best left for another post.
Open your minds, guys. With a little help from modern medicine, sometimes
a three and a five can join together and create a seven. The important
thing is that a sum have an equation with two loving, caring parts.
