Just pick the Heritage Foundation's handy pamphlet...

Same sex marriage has more to do with anti-miscegination laws than does traditional marriage. For one, there's the novelty, since anti-miscegination laws were regional and short-lived. For another, anti-miscegination laws tried to use marriage to enforce racial segregation instead of to unite parents with their children. Same sex marriage is a mechanism for affirmation of homsexual relationships. So both misuse marriage.

Or, you could read Justice Kennedy's dismissal of the idea that invalidating traditional marriage laws would be as modest a step as invalidating anti-miscegenation laws was:

It [traditional marriage without racial restrictions] was hundreds of years old in the common law countries. This [anti-miscegenation laws] was new to the United States.

Or you could look to Tedd Olson's answer to Justice Scalia's question about when it became unconstitutional to define marriage with sexual complementarity:

MR. OLSON: It was . . . when we -as a culture determined that sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control, and that that --

JUSTICE SCALIA: I see. When did that happen? When did that happen?

MR. OLSON: There’s no specific date , th?is is an evolutionary cycle.

Then you could take a look at what Chief Justice Roberts has to say about whether traditional marriage is exclusionary:

I’m not sure that it’s right to view this as excluding a particular group. When the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn’t get around and say let’s have this institution, but let’s keep out homosexuals. The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn’t include homosexual couples.

It is — yes, you can say that it serves some of the other interests where it makes sense to include them, but not all the interests. And it seems to me, your friend argues on the other side, if you have an institution that pursues additional interests, you don’t have to include everybody just because some other aspects of it can be applied to them.

Well, so if it was only unconstitutional when some kind of social consensus decided it was wrong, then it's nothing like institutional racism which Olson surely wouldn't said was always unconstitutional, even if the framers of the 14th amendment didn't realize that was an implication of their doctrine. (Also note that Olson's argument would make "gay" a social construct)

camcgee®

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that is idiotic, and not at all what it being argued...

Mar 29, 2013, 12:51 PM

Ed Whelan deals with this pretty well here (and even if you don't agree with what Whelan says about "the infertile couple canard," his last paragraph should be enough to convince you of why the OP's reasoning is wrong). I also think it's unfair to post something responding to whatever Heritage might be putting out without linking to what they're objecting to. Because I know for a fact that they aren't arguing that sterilization or infertility is a reason to deny recognition of marriage.

http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/344166/prop-8-case-and-infertile-couple-canard-ed-whelan

Marriage developed in this country, and everywhere in human civilization, as a male-female union because societies recognized that opposite-sex couples, as a class, have the capacity to procreate. Marriage exists to increase the likelihood that children will be born and raised in stable and enduring family units by the mothers and fathers who, often unintentionally, naturally generated their very existence. As Prop 8 proponents show (Brief at 31-35), leading thinkers over the centuries—including many, like Bertrand Russell, anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and sociologist Kingsley Davis—have consistently recognized the central connection between marriage and responsible procreation and childrearing. This basic truth was commonly acknowledged until the recent movement to redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships made it fashionable to deny or obscure it.

The elementary biological reality that opposite-sex couples, as a class, have the capacity to procreate makes it eminently sensible that marriage has developed as a male-female union. To argue against the actual tradition of marriage by pointing out that infertile opposite-sex couples have been allowed to marry is simply to smuggle into the question a standard of strict-scrutiny review.

Further, as Prop 8 proponents make clear (Reply at 11-12):

More important, the overriding societal purpose of marriage is not to ensure that all marital unions produce children. Rather, it is to channel the presumptive procreative potential of opposite-sex relationships into enduring marital unions so that if any children are born, they will be more likely to be raised in stable family units by both their mothers and fathers. In other words, because society prefers married opposite-sex couples without children to children without married mothers and fathers, it encourages marriage for all (otherwise eligible) heterosexual relationships, including those relatively few that maynot produce offspring.

In addition, there are obvious and compelling reasons why the states have never undertaken to inquire into whether men and women seeking to marry each other will be fertile couples. These include basic privacy concerns against an intrusive Orwellian government. They also include the general indeterminacy of fertility.

As Justice Kagan observed, there will, of course, be some opposite-sex couples whose infertility together may safely be presumed. But to imagine that that fact cuts against the development of marriage as a male-female union is to subject marriage to a level of hyper-exacting scrutiny that can’t be justified. (Plus, as Chuck Cooper correctly pointed out—to the guffaws of snarkers like Dana Milbank who don’t even have the decency to fairly recount what he said—even for an aged couple it is very likely that the husband retains his fertility, and the marital norm of fidelity operates to help ensure that he doesn’t have children outside the marriage.)

For those who invoke the infertile-couple canard and who think that marriage is instead about government recognition of a loving relationship that the parties hope to be permanent: Note that states also never inquire into whether couples seeking to marry in fact love each other. So don’t impose on marriage a test that your own reconception of it can’t meet.

Message was edited by: camcgee®

Message was edited by: camcgee®

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My name is Robert McCollum, and I have had a vasectomy.

Son, have you ever seen a grown man naked?

Was you checking me out in the shower?

Cobra Kai***

Agree, Heritage.org = neocon hacks***

Re: Agree, Heritage.org = neocon hacks***

Does it taste different after vasectomy***

TXTF says it does.***

but

You referring to this?

Opponents of marriage equality are on the run

I understand the religious argument that marriage

what are traditional wedding vows?***

C'mon!!! You're not stupid.

Re: C'mon!!! You're not stupid.

Exactly. Makes no difference.

no, it has nothing to do with interracial marriage

Just admit that all of this social "science" is just

you're assuming that the state created marriage...

And tangentially, my wife has polycystic ovaries and gave

IF YOU GOT SNIPPED HOW IS BABBY FORMED?***

grudge pregnancy

Marriage is two things. First it was a religious and

Its the same argument, just a different sector of people

How do you know what gays are fighting for?

a lot of them say that's what they're fighting for

How are gay relationships equal before the law?

there is no right to affirmation and recognition

I'd have no problem with the state not being involved at all

I don't at all...

Good thing you and others can make those decisions

I was all for civil unions BUT...........

Lol.***

And I'll add...

marriage is not a religious institution

that is idiotic, and not at all what it being argued...

Where are kids, or procreation mentioned in...

well...

So we should accept assumptions as fact?

the vows don't make the marriage, first of all

Many of us don't accept Theodosian code as the law of

I think you're the only one who is confused about what

could you bold the unimportant parts***

too busy to read 10 sentences?***

what exactly is it you want

Re: what exactly is it you want

We have common law to protect heterosexuals.

the spouse traditionally staying home ship sailed long ago***

Re: the spouse traditionally staying home ship sailed long ago***

Are there important parts?***

hi robert***

well Tbalm scok... err...Robert McCollum....

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