Federal Judge: Gay Marriage Is Bad For The Economy? You Can’t Be Serious!

Kentucy Gov. Steve Beshear makes his victory speech during a election night rally in Frankfort, Ky., Tuesday Nov. 8, 2011. Beshear was re-elected Tuesday, becoming the second Democrat to win a U.S. gubernatorial race... Kentucy Gov. Steve Beshear makes his victory speech during a election night rally in Frankfort, Ky., Tuesday Nov. 8, 2011. Beshear was re-elected Tuesday, becoming the second Democrat to win a U.S. gubernatorial race this year amid lingering economic uncertainty that's already proving worrisome to President Barack Obama's 2012 effort. (AP Photo/John Flavell) MORE LESS

Kentucky advanced some interesting arguments to defend its ban on gay marriage: The state said it had an “economic interest” in banning the marriages because only opposite-sex marriage leads to procreation, which in turn benefits the economy.

U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II had some choice words for those arguments in his decision Tuesday striking down the ban: They are “not those of serious people.”

From Heyburn’s decision, posted by the Louisville Courier-Journal:

These arguments are not those of serious people. Though it seems almost unnecessary to explain, here are the reasons why. Even assuming the state has a legitimate interest in promoting procreation, the Court fails to see, and Defendant never explains, how the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage has any effect whatsoever on procreation among heterosexual spouses. Excluding same-sex couples from marriage does not change the number of heterosexual couples who choose to get married, the number who choose to have children, or the number of children they have.

“The state’s attempts to connect the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage to its interest in economic stability and in ‘ensuring humanity’s continued existence’ are at best illogical and even bewildering,” he concluded.

The state of Kentucky isn’t the only entity pushing that argument, though: former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said the same last month.

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  1. What the RWNJ’s are really saying is, “The only reason I got married and had children was because it wasn’t legal for me to set up housekeeping with my rent boy. So if the state makes it legal, I’ll leave my wife, and not have any more children.”

  2. These arguments are not those of serious people. Though it seems almost unnecessary to explain

    Fact: Married gay friends will celebrate their union with a bash that’s already costing over $30K…Take that, economy!

  3. By the way, according to Wikipedia, Heyburn is a McConnell-recommended GHW Bush Judge.

  4. I wonder if these people even know what real intimacy is?  I’ll give them a hint; it’s not a man jumping
    on a woman for two or three minutes and then rolling off to turn the game on.

  5. Yeah? Because we should always let the courts decide on basic civil rights for people in this country based on how it affects the economy…even if it is totally fabricated nonsense with nothing to back it up. What a losing laughable argument.

    Good thing, the majority of courts aren’t buying that load of bullshit…at least not on this issue…

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