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Posts published in “Day: February 4, 2007”

At their word

DOMA is constitutional because the legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children’s biological parents. Allowing same-sex couples to marry does not, in the legislature’s view, further these purposes.
- Washington Supreme Court, majority opinion p. 6, Anderson v. King County (2006)

Okay. If the Supreme Court's interpretation is correct, then the initiative proposed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance should pass muster, if it can pass the voters. It does already have initial approval from the secretary of state's office.

Despite what you might think, this DOMA is not a supporter of the other DOMA - the state Defense of Marriage Act of 1998, upheld for constitutionality by the Washington Supreme Court (in the opinion producing the excerpt above). Quite the contrary, and it makes an emphatic point in response.

For the sake of argument, it argues, let's take the court's logic seriously - that the point of marriage is procreation, and this is a legitimate concern of the state. It draws out the implication in three proposed initiatives. (They need a large number of valid signatures to qualify for ballot status; their ability to get them may turn on just how much the voters of Washington embrace irony.) The first of them, I-957, is the most striking.

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