Procration and childrearing may be advanced in convenience by marriage, but most of the benefits of marriage relate to to the simple proposition that the implicit intent of married persons is to in effect “become one.” Since the law is intended at its best to fairly carry out the intentions of people, clearly, marriage as a legal institution advances what is assumed to be the default intentions of most married people. Default rules are intended to avoid every married person having to go to the trouble of making explicit what they thought was already sufficiently manifest by the act of getting married. Hence, it is assumed that a spouse is in the best position to know the intentions of another spouse who has become incapacitated, and this is true no matter how little time the couple has been married, and whether or not they have children or have announced their intentions to never have children, and no matter, for instance, if one of the spouses is Wiccan and the other Catholic. It is assumed that the spouses intended to “marry” their assets, hence a spouse without a will laves the other spouse his or her exclusive heir, again, no matter how long the spouses have been married and even if there are a bevy of children from a previous marriage who need the money a lot more. So even if no person seeking SSM intends to raise children (a ridiculous proposition on its face as there are many already doing it), nobody has stated why the non-procreation linked benefits of marraige should be available to non-procreating straights but not non-procreating gays.

Okay, so that’s what you meant. Not that I disagree with Jake Squid’s assessment that children also benefit by the marriage of parent and step-parent: I don’t.

But, going by your distinction that marriage is of no benefit to children unless a couple are married when the child is born, it follows that the state is “protecting the interests of potential children” if it supports the marriage of lesbian couples, since children can be (and are) born to either woman in a same-sex relationship.

And, since I (along with all adoption agencies) think that marriage is also useful in protecting the interests of adopted children, it follows that the state should actually support the marriage of all same-sex couples, thus avoiding the charge of gender discrimination, and also providing for the interests of children adopted or fostered, by same-sex and mixed-sex couples.

Remind me again, was that supposed to be an argument against same-sex marriage?

Are you sure about that? Maybe you should check into that and come back and correct your statement. (Hint: her new husband does become a legal guardian of her “children already born.” So, there’s is one legal effect that you didn’t know about.)

Think about it. If a woman has children already, from previous relationships, and gets married, her marriage has no LEGAL effect on her children already born. It affects her potential future children.

Just like a safety net protects acrobats from potential falls. Setting up a safety net is useless to acrobats who have already hit the ground from a fall.

You may cry that I’m being callous, but that’s reality for you.

I’m not saying that we should not do something for existent children. But that’s another program.

If you want real data on what marriage does, then read the links off the first page of Maggie’s site. As I see it, anyone who denies something as obvious as a child’s need for a mother and a father, isn’t going to pay attention to the data anyway.

Ah: protecting the interests of potential children.

Not real live actual children, running around and eating and making messes and wanting cuddles and questions answered and help with homework and needing to know how to make gingerbread cookies and stuff: just potential children.

So it’s all for the sake of the potential children…

It’s odd how often the anti-marriage crowd drift into justifying things in terms of “potential”, or “illusion”, or “ostensible”, and how seldom they can justify themselves by pointing to real data.

Today the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to try to advance the “Marriage Protection Amendment” out of committee.

According to HRC we have a sympathetic ear in the Chairman, Arlen Specter. He is opposed, and has the power to keep this faith-based amendment from seeing the Senate floor.

They are urging us to call his DC office and encourage his opposition to the “Marriage Protection Amendment.”

I have contact info on my page. Feel free to borrow and share anything from the post you would like.

We have a small, but URGENT window of opportunity here. Please call him!

Yes, the state has many motives for promoting marriage. But in a country of limited government like the USA, only ONE of those motives could reasonably justify maintaining an institution that establishes a separate kind of status for citizens who pair up.

The only reason that justifies an institution like marriage, is protecting the interests of potential children, and maximizing the proportion of children raised by a father and a mother.

The other reasons for marriage are just gravy. If you add them all up, they still would not justify an institution like marriage. Not in a country like the US, where status is suspect.

One of the dimensions is that “marriage is a sacred promise”. It’s great that people have the opportunity to make sacred promises, but this isn’t sufficient grounds to justify government involvement - the state doesn’t get involved in baptisms or confirmations, for example. Many of the “statement of principles” may be perfectly nice, but you can’t use them to provide an ethical basis for government action.

In regards to the post, well . . . what Amp said.

Why would a conservative believe the government should regulate something merely because that thing is a “generator of social and human capital”? So is art. So is exercise. And, if you need an example of something involving multiple consenting adults, so is live theatre or a university education; I wouldn’t want the government deciding who can participate in any of those activities.

The government should stay out of the marriage issue entirely. That’s the consistent position, but not one the right wants to take because the right needs to use government to control who can marry.