And then there were three
Yahoo! News reports, "Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled Friday that gay couples have the right to marry, making the state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions through the courts."
The court noted, as many of us know, that "civil unions" and "domestic partnerships" are not enough to protect the rights of same-sex couples. Such designations are akin to the "separate but equal" reasoning behind all other forms of segregation.
*throws confetti for all the happy Connecticut couples*
Yet still I am irritated, because, as often happens, procreation was called into play to defend "traditional" marriage when "Justice Peter T. Zarella wrote that ... the court's majority failed to discuss the purpose of marriage laws, which he said is to 'privilege and regulate procreative conduct.'"
*blinks*
Excuse me, Justice Zarella, but I believe you just denied my right to marriage. True, I am heterosexual and thus have always had legal rights to marry. However, I have no intention of having children. If you're going to use the argument that marriage's sole purpose is to populate our world (and you know? last I checked, that was going along just fine. We already have an above-capacity crowd, and it's not like legalizing same-sex marriage is going to stop babies being born), you are denying me the right to marry the person with whom I choose to spend the rest of my life and all the legal protections that legal marriage brings. (And make no mistake, legal marriage is the only form with which I am concerned. I will be having a secular wedding, and the Church can keep their nose out of it, thanks.)
So to sum up: By reading between the lines of many of the arguments against same-sex marriage, we get "only those unions that will produce an offspring are allowed." Which says that heterosexuals like myself don't have the right to marry, either.
This is unacceptable.