Marriage equality is coming to France

The National Assembly of France has voted 331–225 to enable marriage equality (via):

French lawmakers have legalized same-sex marriage after months of bruising debate and street protests that brought hundreds of thousands to Paris.

Tuesday’s 331-225 vote came in the Socialist majority National Assembly. France’s justice minister, Christiane Taubira, said the first weddings could be as soon as June….

And regarding those protests, they were weird in light of something I mentioned years ago:

The number of PACS [the French acronym of the Civil Solidarity Pact] celebrated in France, both gay and heterosexual unions, has grown from 6,000 in its first year of operation in 1999 to more than 140,000 in 2008, according to official statistics. For every two marriages in France, a PACS is celebrated, the statistics show, making a total of half a million PACS[']ed couples, and the number is rising steadily.

[...]

Perhaps more important as an indication of how French people live, the number of heterosexual men and women entering into a PACS agreement has grown from 42 percent of the total initially to 92 percent last year [2008].

Notice how all those PACS were actually reducing the number of marriages? Enabling same–sex marriage eliminates this justification for PACS. But the protestors would rather there be fewer marriages rather than marriage equality.

Worst argument against marriage equality EVER

I think we should file this under the “You can’t make this up” category (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON — Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, “substantial advance planning is required,” said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House Republicans.

This unusual defense of traditional marriage was set out last week in a pair of opening legal briefs in the two gay marriage cases to be decided by the Supreme Court this spring.

This argument from shotgun wedding pretty much shows how opponents of marriage have no real arguments. That’s why they’ve come up with an argument that actually comes up with a reason to support same–sex marriage. Also juxtapose how many of those who oppose marriage equality also attack Planned Parenthood and seek to restrict access to abortion and contraception.

The apparently disturbing thing about this argument is that it has been used before and apparently accepted by some US court.

Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Child of the random stuff

In no particular order:

• Brilliant takedown of someone who fails to understand that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from criticism.
• Have you ever seen a more obvious and more blatant example of deliberately losing? At least they got what they deserved.
• Vietnam (of all places) might enable marriage equality. If it does so, Vietnam will be the first country in Asia to do so. Get with the times, USA.
  • I wonder when the wingnuts will start claiming that marriage equality is some communist plot.
• China’s brutal athlete training methods. They seem uncomfortably close to the “professional amateurs” some communist countries used to use.
• A must–read post about maladaptive daydreaming. Please, please read it.
• The Sensuous Curmudgeon fisks a creationist who’s so far along the downward spiral of stupid that they claim “[plants] are not alive.”
  • No, that’s not a Poe and no, I’m not making this up.

Sequel of the random stuff

In no particular order:

• Same–sex marriage was illegal in North Carolina, but the people there voted to ban it again.
  • The last time North Carolina amended their constitution to concern marriage was to ban interracial marriage (via).
• If it was legalized, same–sex marriage could provide a one billion dollar boost to the American budget each year for a decade. Marriage equality, it’s good for the economy!
• Teh cute.
• Yet another misogynistic fundamentalist pastor. He’s against women voting and blames them for everything. No surprise there.
• I’ve often said that complementarianism is really hierarchicalism. And now (via) Rachel Held Evans reports that complementarianism is losing ground. Good.
  • Evans also quotes someone who writes that (my emphasis) “For millennia, followers of God have practiced what used to be called patriarchy and is now called complementarianism.” Well, at least he’s honest.

Obama officially supports marriage equality

Barack Obama has officially come out in favour of marriage equality.

Credit’s due where credit’s due, but frankly, this is no surprise to me. There was no doubt in my mind that he supported same–sex marriage the whole time. He just didn’t say so in a hopeless attempt at hair–splitting, meet–in–the–middleism in a pathetic try at compromising with unreachable wingnuts.

I told you this would happen

At Fannie’s Room I came across a link to this article at Slate. It mostly concerns different–sex couples in Illinois who are opting for civil unions rather than marriage. In other words, there are fewer marriages than would otherwise have been the case.

The appropriate response to this is, of course, “I told you this would happen”. Just as I predicted over a year ago when this law was passed, and just as has happened in France, by allowing different–sex couples access to civil unions, it creates a competitor to marriage, and therefore weakens marriage and reduced the number of marriages. Had marriage equality simply been allowed none of this would have happened. This is why the supposed concern over the “sanctity of marriage” actually isn’t. Someone who was truly concerned about the sanctity of marriage would not create alternative to it. Rather, they would support marriage equality and therefore increase the number of marriage. Since none of the opponents of marriage equality (that I know of) appear to be doing anything to prevent the benefits of marriage from being available to those who aren’t married, it is clear that opposition to marriage equality is really motivated by bigotry.

And since Hawaii’s civil unions law also allows different–sex couples to enter into civil unions, I predict that the same thing will happen there.

Prop 8 struck down

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has, in a 2–1 ruling, struck down California’s bigoted Proposition 8 (via). Hence, unless a stay is issued, same–sex couples will be able to marry in the 9th circuit’s jurisdiction California again. Personally, I expect a stay to be issued and the appeals process to continue, hence I don’t think same–sex couples will be allowed to marry.

In the decision is granted the proponents of Prop 8 standing to defend, and it rejected the claim that the trial judge, Vaughn Walker, should have disqualified himself because he is gay. The striking down was the correct decision. And in reaction to the ruling, I expect the wingnut and homophobe types to freak out.

From the decision:

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California.”

Update: The actual ruling is an extremely narrow, California–specific ruling, and I have therefore corrected that error. Also, the Daily Dish has a mini–roundup of reactions.