While the Supreme Court decided the Prop 8 trial in San Francisco won’t be shown on youtube, as you’d expect it’s sure getting lots of ink. Like childfree blogger Daisy Duke says about what she has heard about gay marriage on the radio recently, some of the ink makes my hair stand on end too… An article in the San Francisco Chronicle quotes Charles Cooper, lawyer for the Protect Marriage coalition as saying “extending marriage to same-sex couples would undermine its status as a  ‘pro-child’ institution, and redefine marriage as a private relationship between two adults who love each other.”

Research tells us that marriage is already redefined–

The notion that you get married to have children just isn’t how it is anymore. Pew research did a study a couple of years ago (see the researcher talking about the study on the Good Morning America) that makes it loud and clear that having children is not the most important reason people say they get married…not even close.  This goes for marriages without children by choice and those that end up bringing children into the picture.  People get married because they think it will contribute to their life fulfillment.

Cooper also says that marriage has always been defined as a union of a man and a women “across history, across customs, across societies.” C’mon! If you believe that I have a used car to sell you.  Nancy Cott, a Harvard history professor and author of Public Vows testified the truth–that our “nation’s founders knew that monogamous unions, which they favored, were much different from the historical practices of other cultures and religions that fostered polygamous and group marriages.” She said “a defining principle of U.S. marriage, which applied to newly freed slaves and other once-excluded groups, was ‘voluntary allegiance and consent,’ –the ability to marry the partner of one’s choice.

Prop 8 defenders need a history lesson.  Let’s hope the courts don’t and that it upholds what is every person’s constitutional right–the chance to marry the person of their choice.

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