Indefensible stupidity

Okay, I said that I was going to get to that state of Washington thing later. Well, it's later now. The case I found was Andersen v. King County, which seemed to reverse an earlier ruling that would have allowed same-sex marriages in Washington state.

Stop me if I've got this wrong, but I thought that at the state level the supreme courts are generally meant to ensure that previous rulings are in line with the constitutions of their states. If I understand this ruling, the decision to disallow same-sex marriages in Washington under the Defense Of Marriage Act was defensible for two reasons.

The first is that unless a law can be found to offer a positive protection to a discriminated-against minority, it should be subject to federal standards of equal protection. Am I too far off in thinking that means "it's okay to protect people who have been treated unfairly, but otherwise it should protect everyone equally"? But the court's ruling claimed that

"The plaintiffs have not established that they are members of a suspect class or that they have a fundamental right to marriage that includes the right to marry a person of the same sex. "

Because, you know, there's nothing at all indicating that same-sex couples in the US are treated any differently. And the reasoning here seems to be that this decision is constitutional because both men and women are equally prohibited from same-sex marriages. Shouldn't that also mean that legislating separate water fountains (or hospitals or schools) by race would be okay as long as each group was equally prohibited from using the others' facilities?

Bullshit.

The bulk of this claim seems to rest on the court's argument that the plaintiffs haven't shown that "homosexuality is immutable", that is, an unalterable part of a person's identity. Is there any other group of people who would be subject to such a ridiculous claim? I guess advances in prosthetics mean it's okay to discriminate against people missing limbs. If Michael Jackson can change his color, anyone can, so anyplace can have a whites-only policy. No Jews allowed? Of course, there's churches everywhere that are begging for converts. No women? Sex-changes!

Bullshit.

But leave that aside too, there's another claim that I find less stupid, but more unsettling:

"DOMA is constitutional because the legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children's biological parents. Allowing same-sex couples to marry does not, in the legislature's view, further these purposes."

Let's just skip the arguments about biological-parent homes. Adoption, IVF, sperm donation and divorce apparently have no bearing here. That's too many points to try and argue about. But there's a much larger assumption that's got me worried.

At what point did we cede the safeguarding of the human race to any legislature? Is it honestly acceptable to claim that allowing same-sex marriages jeopardizes the future of the human race? If there is anyone who will honestly claim that people will stop having babies just because same-sex couples can get married, they don't have any business trying to represent people living on earth. Anyone so vastly out of touch with human nature shouldn't be trusted with authority over humans. Anyone with so little faith in the human race doesn't deserve to represent us. And anyone so stupid as to think that anyone will give up sex because other people with a different preference are doing it and still claiming to be married shouldn't be driving, much less making or interpreting law.

There may be all sorts of personal reasons to not marry someone. But I have yet to see an ethical, logical, humane reason to prevent some adult from marrying some other adult. It's just a lot of obfuscation and fear, and it cheapens the legal and legislative processes.