These 6 States Want to Ban Marriage Altogether Rather Than Let Same-Sex Couples Wed
A popular phrase among right-wingers right now is “Suck it up, you lost.” And yet, when it comes to the marriage equality debate, they’re still fighting a war that’s already been decided. The latest attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision is banning all marriage. Six states have introduced legislation replacing the marriage license with a “marriage contract.”
The central idea is childish. It’s exactly like a child saying, “Mommy, if I can’t have cookies, I’ll just have zeep-zops, my new word that just happens to mean ‘cookies.’” But since neither Mommy nor anyone else knows what the heck “zeep-zops” are, the kid’s clever plan won’t work and neither will the childish plan of these states: After all, most federal agencies, like Social Security, specifically ask for a marriage license, not a contract.
Ironically, this is the same issue many same-sex couples had prior to the 2015 Supreme Court decision, when some states tried to introduce a neither-fish-nor-fowl solution by calling marriages with “civil partnerships.” Hospitals, schools, adoption agencies and government offices had no idea what a “civil partnership” was and sometimes denied rights to same-sex couples despite their being legally co-joined.
The only difference now is that, instead of just trying to give gays weird marriage substitute, they’re trying to give everyone one. And yet they’re leaving the word “marriage” in their new term, which is odd seeing as “marriage” is the word religious conservatives are so mad at LGBTQ people for taking over.
The marriage contract “solution” is proposed for probate judges who refuse to officiate same-sex weddings. In the case of Alabama, then-Chief Justice Roy Moore told officials they weren’t bound by the court ruling. That didn’t go so well for Moore — he was fired. Still, at least 12 judges decided to stop issuing marriage licenses all together, rather than be forced to marry a same-sex couple.
We can’t imagine this is popular with the public. In a similar case, after a Supreme Court decision forced Arkansas to issue birth certificates to same-sex marriage, the state refused. No same-sex birth certificates were issues until December, when Judge Tim Fox banned all birth certificates from being issued until they abided by the Court’s ruling. After Judge Fox’s ruling, it took all of two hours for the problem to be fixed.
Marriage contract legislation has been introduced in Alabama, Oklahoma, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Montana.
What do you think of marriage contract legislation? Let us know in the comments!
Featured image by JGalione via iStock
