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.

More evidence that LGBT parents are good

Yet another study has found that gay and lesbian parents are just as good as straight parents, even when the circumstances are (for lack of a better term) stacked against them. It examined (at 2, 12, and 24 months after adoption) 82 high–risk children who were adopted. Of those children, 60 were adopted by different–sex couples and 22 by same–sex couples. The result?

From the abstract:

On average, children in both household types showed significant gains in cognitive development and maintained similar levels of behavior problems over time, despite gay and lesbian parents raising children with higher levels of biological and environmental risks prior to adoptive placement. Results demonstrated that high-risk children show similar patterns of development over time in heterosexual and gay and lesbian adoptive households.

And as mentioned at Salon, LGBT couples were more likely to adopt higher–risk high–risk children.

These results are entirely consistent with numerous previous studies: same–sex couples are just as good at parenting as different–sex couples, and perhaps even a little bit better.

Of course, I know that (almost certainly) not one wingnut or homophobe will change their views about this. Besides being driven by homophobia, I also see those people’s opposition to LGBT adoption as being driven by misogyny. After all, if you truly, truly believed that abortion was murder, how the hell could being adopted by a same–sex couple possibly be worse than killing someone? Now, you would think that it would be better to be adopted by a same–sex couple than to be dead. This would apply even if same–sex couples were the worst possible parents (which they’re not). This is why anyone who is why simultaneously being both anti–choice and anti–LGBT adoption is a hopelessly incoherent position. These people cannot possibly think that research going on since the 1970′s and all showing the same result (same–sex couples are just as good as different–sex couples) is inadequate. The only possible explanation is that they really do believe that being raised by a same–sex couple is worse than death. If they do believe that then they really are the worst sort of homophobe. If they don’t, then they are simply the usual anti–choicer who sees forced birth as a woman’s punishment for daring to have sex. That’s why those people’s opposition to LGBT adoption is motivated not only by homophobia but also by deep misogyny.

Via slendermeans.

Spouse of the random stuff

In no particular order:

• Melissa on how the experience of Canadian versus American prenatal care helped change her views on universal health care.
• No surprise here. Some religious groups are attacking Melinda Gates’ campaign to raise awareness of contraception in the developing world. They call it a “blatant attack on morality.” As opposed to, you know, something really immoral, like oppressing women by denying birth control to them.
• A Guttmacher Institute report indicates that this year will likely have as many new restrictions on abortion as the previous year, and possibly more (via). However, there is also good news; for example, fewer states are attempting to cut funding for family planning services.
• Four ways the internet could go down.
• The American (heteronormative patriarchial) Family Association has announced a boycott of Google due to the latter’s LGBT rights campaign, Legalize Love (via). It will “test the meat of our convictions.” Then they’d better have really tough convictions, as they’re running out of companies that aren’t anti–LGBT.
• Canada has a new non–profit organization and advocacy group, Bad Science Watch, that will promote evidence–based policies and provide information to protect consumers from junk science (via). Let’s hope they’re successful.
• (Added in an update) What government does for you.

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.