Eating your own dogfood

by Feòrag

United States: No, not Gillian McKeith again. This time it's the Washington Defense of Marriage Initiative, which proposes some innovative legislation, insisting that marriage really is for the sake of the children, and for no other purpose.

If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:

• add the phrase, who are capable of having children with one another to the legal definition of marriage;
• require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
• require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as unrecognized;
• establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
• make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.

So which bunch of fundies is behind this initiative? The answer is that it isn't—it's the work of some Americans with a sense of irony.

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court's ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a legitimate state interest allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this legitimate state interest, it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage.

The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court's ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.

Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstit[u]ional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.

The chief executive of Allies for Marriage and Children, a fundie organisation which supports special rights for heterosexuals, spectacularly failed to get the joke. (Thanks Supergee).

Tags: lgbt, marriage, United States, washington state