Houston Mayor Annise Parker got married in California to Kathy Hubbard yesterday. But Texas, like Oklahoma, has a Constitutional provision banning such marriages.
So, did Mayor Parker create a community property estate here in Texas, where she lives? Is her marriage even legitimate here in Texas?
These are the kinds of issues that get marriage bans, even in state constitutions, overturned. I don't know if Mayor Parker wants to have that fight; but it's coming from somebody, soon.
What, after all, is the rational basis for such a ban? Is it any stronger than the ban on inter-racial marriages?
"What, after all, is the rational basis for such a ban?"
ReplyDeleteSeems rather plain to me that the biological and social consequences of two people living together in a sexual relationship differ greatly, depending on whether they are members of the same sex, or members of opposite sexes, and that the law might reasonably have distinctive concerns about arrangements that bring into existence persons with the right to life, liberty and property (not to mention needing being fed, burped, changed and educated).
I take it for granted that that distinction is rapidly being declared "irrational," and thus beyond the right of anyone to vote on it, going hand in hand, strangely, with other trends coming from the right. But I recognize we hardly live in a golden age of democracy.
Not that I buy all the nonsense about this being the death of marriage. Marriage is a real thing, which will persist, however many other relationships the law wedges into the category.
And I guess I should add that I really hesitate about posting anything at all. I don't want to argue with anybody. I'd rather, most of the time, just the leave the thing alone. But it does grate a little to be constantly assured that what seems to me the most obvious thing in the world is utterly irrational, and presumably then based on bigotry and hatred.