Michigan’s Republican attorney general argued in a brief filed last week that the state’s same-sex marriage ban is intended to help “regulate sexual relationships” in an effort to promote procreation, MLive.com reported.
Representing Gov. Rick Snyder (R), state Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office was opposing a motion to a federal judge by Michigan couple April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, who argued that the adoption ban violates the federal guarantee of due process enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In the brief filed Sept. 9, the state says that Michigan has defined marriage as being between “one man, one woman” in order to “regulate sexual relationships between men and women so that the unique procreative capacity of such relationships benefits rather than harms society.”The state also says that before a 2004 court ruling asserting the right of same-sex couples to get married in Massachusetts, “it was commonly understood that the institution of marriage owed its very existence to society’s vital interest in responsible procreation and childrearing.”
