You Can't Make This Shit Up
New Ballot Initiative Proposed in Washington State
(1) All couples married in this state shall have three years from the date of solemnization of the marriage, or eighteen months from the effective date of this act, whichever is later, to have filed with the state registrar of vital statistics or designated deputy registrar at least one certificate of marital procreation as described in section 11 of this act.
Yes, it says exactly what you think it says.
Hat tip Slog
Comments
This is Sheer Genius!!!
Melanie: Dig into this a little further, and you'll see (as I initially suspected) that the sponsor of this ballot-initiative, "Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance," is actually a marriage-equality group seeking to expose the hypocrisy of those who oppose gay marriage on the grounds that marriage as an institution is about making babies, and after all gays and lesbians can't make babies the way good wholesome heterosexual couples do...
I'll let the group's website (at www.wa-doma.org) speak for itself:
WHAT WE ARE ABOUT
The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a “legitimate state interest” allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this “legitimate state interest,” it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage.
The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.
Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.
Posted by: Packerland_Progressive | February 5, 2007 01:52 PM
Yeah, this is brilliant political creativity on their part. I'd like to see more groups using similar tactics, confronting extremists with the logical conclusions of their own rhetoric.
Posted by: Leslie in CA | February 6, 2007 06:28 PM