7th Circuit: Same-Sex Marriage Bans Unconstitutional

Bam!

As expected due to Judge Richard Posner's blistering, and quite wonderful, questioning of "marriage defense" attorneys during oral arguments, the 7th Circuit has found that Indiana and Wisconsin do not have a reasonable basis for denying same-sex couples the right to marry (PDF of opinion).

I've read the entire opinion, of which no doubt NOM and company are already issuing their reactionary cries of judicial activism gone awry.  But, it's a paragraph at the very beginning that I want to highlight today:

"The argument that the states press hardest in defense of their prohibition of same-sex marriage is that the only reason government encourages marriage is to induce heterosexuals to marry so that there will be fewer 'accidental births,' which when they occur outside of marriage often lead to abandonment of the child to the mother (unaided by the father) or to foster care. Overlooked by this argument is that many of those abandoned children are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parents were married."

This observation is, for me, what has always made "marriage defenders" seem particularly cruel and oblivious to the reality.

So many "pro-family" conservatives wring their hands about the hoards of purportedly irresponsible heterosexuals, particularly men, who have children out of wedlock and yet their top policy solution is, "I know, let's make life more difficult for a subset of the parents who adopt the resulting children!"

If these people were sincere in their desire to actually help the families that exist in the real world, they would be grateful to same-sex couples and looking for ways to work with us to provide the best environments for all families, not just those families they deem to be the bestest most supreme families of all.

In their zeal to prevent same-sex couples from marriage, they also present one of the worst PR campaigns for marriage ever:

Marriage: It's for pressuring straight men into sticking around and raising the unintended children that they don't even want!

Brilliant strategy, folks!  Put these people in charge of all the things!  /sarcastic thumbs up sign

But seriously, combined with their correlative opposition to abortion, same-sex adoption and parenting, no fault divorce, and sex ed, it's almost like some social conservatives are intentionally trying to create the world's most unhappy, miserable people. Or, at least, more babies in orphanages.

Yet, their policies they refer to as "good old-fashioned common sense."  And, policies that acknowledge the other families that exist in the real world, they dismiss as political correctness gone awry, as though we exist primarily to annoy them and not because we have life aspirations of our own.  This kind of self-centeredness of privileged folks is the worst.

Also, one of the plaintiffs in the above-cited case is named Virginia Wolf.  Which is awesome and why is no one talking about that?!