In today's Salon, Sarah Miles writes truth in Ban on gay marriage denies justice to children. Among other things, she notes that the judge who wrote the befuddled majority decision "delivered a surprising attack on the heterosexual agenda: Straight people, he said, are really bad at marriage."
A protection and partial fix is thus to ban same-sex marriage. Double huh? from here.
She also notes that the decision declared with no basis other than common sense that it is almost always better for kids to grow up with a mother and father. At the same time, he dismissed out of hand over 20 years of science indicating otherwise, showing that same-sex couples are at least as good parents.
We see again that when someone falls back on it's obvious or it's common sense, there just emotion and not intellect or supportable reason. We're back to geometry and are supposed to start with postulates. Bovine feces.
Miles piggybacks on Chief Judge Judith Kaye's dissent that included that New York surely has an interest in promoting heterosexual couples to marry before reproducing. The opinion diverges with "the exclusion of gay men and lesbians from marriage in no way furthers this interest."
Miles adds "...if the courts should encourage marriages that help kids, why aren't the courts supporting the more-likely-to-be-stable relationships of gay couples?"
She is in a Wonderland of legal oddments. She is the biological mom of Katie. She and the other mother were briefly married in San Francisco in 2004 before the legal union was court-annulled, "making us ex-wives living together raising a child, a category not frequently found in surveys of marriage statistics."
The schadenfreude-afflicted and addicted would certainly say that Miles took a chance and lost, bringing this limbo-situation on herself. Pooh on them, what we are asking is what Miles does, why should the child be penalized because her moms can't remarry? What of health insurance other stable couples can share and protect the child with? What of other legal protections -- tax, probate, health care, Social Security and on and on and on?
Miles concludes with a spot of impatient hope:
Which brings me back to feeling powerful -- seriously. As we've seen in South Africa and Eastern Europe and San Francisco, civil society in its richness is always greater than official codes about who is, and isn't, a full person. Katie and a million kids like her are here, and their families will continue to thrive. At some point, the courts will catch up.
Tags: massmarrier, same-sex marriage, New York State, Sara Miles, New York State, Salon
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