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.
