Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Marriage and procreation

Admit it. You've got to get a chuckle or two out of the initiative gay-marriage supporters in Washington state are circulating. It would limit marriage to those willing and able to have children, and would dissolve the union of those who are still childless after three years of marriage.

It's a joke, of course. The backstory is that the Washington Supreme Court last July upheld the state's Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as only between a man and a woman, in part because one of the purposes of marriage is procreation.

All right, if that's one of the purposes, organizers say, in their satirical way, let's get serious about it. It's nice to see a bit of humor surfacing in a discussion that is all too seldom leavened by anything but bitterness and anger.

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