This week, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed a response in the federal case to determine whether same-sex couples can marry in the Beaver State. She supports equality for many reasons, but her remarks on the children-related arguments of equality opponents are particularly scathing.
Rosenblum starts by asserting, “Family stability is a legitimate state interest, but one that is not furthered by limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples,” and offering four reasons:
- Oregon does not tie marriage rights or inducements to procreation;
- Oregon has never limited its legal protections to only the biological children of opposite-sex couples;
- permitting same-sex couples to marry does not reduce the likelihood that opposite-sex couples will enter into stable relationships; and
- the same-sex marriage ban harms the children in those families.
She then picks apart each of these arguments. I’ll spare you most of the details, but I’m rather fond of one statement against number 3: “There is no evidence or even rational speculation that permitting same-sex couples to marry will in any way reduce the desire of opposite-sex couples to marry and create stable families.”
It is her arguments against number 4, though, that make me do my happy dance:
Finally, there is strong evidence that the same-sex marriage ban actually harms many of Oregon’s children, those raised by same-sex parents who want the protections of marriage for their family. . . . Like the DOMA statute invalidated in Windsor, Oregon’s prohibition on same-sex marriage can serve only to “humiliate” the “children now being raised by same-sex couples” and “make[] it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”
She then cites five (five!) other marriage equality cases that say basically the same thing. (I won’t list them all here, but they’re on the top of page 25.) She concludes that since 2004, when Oregon banned marriage for same-sex couples:
Much has changed in the intervening ten years, with a nationwide dialogue on the value of marriage and the government’s interest in promoting healthy families of all kinds. Instead of living in a climate in which same-sex couples are feared and citizens look to their government to protect children from those couples, we now live in a state that recognizes and values same-sex couples and their families. Given what we know today, the state defendants in this case recognize that the ban on same-sex marriage serves no rational purpose and harms Oregon citizens.
A federal judge is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the suit over Oregon’s marriage laws, Rummel and West v. Kitzhaber, on April 23. That also happens to be the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and death, so it seems wise to conclude this post with a quote from the bard: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments.” Let’s hope the judge takes heed.
