I'm hoping someone with a better understanding of legal precedent can help me wrap my head around the judges’ reasoning. I seem to be a little stuck.

I took a look at the statements made by the judges via nytimes.com and from what I was able to gather it seems they 1) acknowledge there are definite benefits and advantages enjoyed by people entered into marriage and that 2) marriage and those benefits are for the purpose of providing stable environments for child rearing, but 3) assert that it is a rational argument to not allow members of same sex unions to enjoy those benefits because they are unable to naturally procreate.

To me, this seems to assume the ability to naturally procreate better enables couples to raise children.

I don’t see where the ability to get pregnant intersects with child rearing ability, and don’t quite understand that given the judges’ assertion that homosexual relationships are more unstable for child rearing, why members of the same sex doing their best to raise children should not be afforded the same benefits. If they really are more unstable, doesn’t this ruling amount to placing further stresses on their relationships, thereby making allegedly unstable unions even more unstable?

Why should it make a difference where the children in this equation come from?

Please tell me what I’m missing.

This just shows once again why we absoletly need a constitutional amendment to preserve the sanctity of marriage. We have no choice when faced by activist judges like these!

I don't understand why this is a Broadsheet issue. Are women the only ones interested in this? I know men read Broadsheet too, but I'm not understanding why almost all of the gay rights stuff ends up here, as if it's specifically a woman's issue.

Broadsheet readers might enjoy my take on the ruling:

http://lawlesslawyer.livejournal.com/34484.html

Cheers!

Is gay marriage not a "women's issue"? I'm sorry that you see "gay" as something that is mutually exclusive from "woman". If you want to try to make this article more relevant to your views perhaps you could see that the article quotes one half of a lesbian couple who is not granted the same rights as a straight woman, simply because she is a woman who loves another woman. That seems like a "woman's issue" to me.

What is the alternative? Do we make a rule that articles which are lesbian-specific or bi-female-specific are relevant but articles regarding gay men are not? [Example of why thinking like that (exclusivity) has been counter-productive in the past: There were/are a lot of feminists who made the (valid) argument that feminism was white-woman-centric (bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison are some well known authors who address this concept) and that for a longtime "women's rights" = white women's rights. I doubt it was ever the intent of feminists to not consider or not include non-white women in their ideologies but it was/still can be the reality.]

If we wittled Broadsheet down to one very specific individualized view of what is "relevant" to women than I bet many if not most Broadsheet readers would feel alienated.

Without being a pedant, the point I'm trying to make, in rather clunky fashion, is "gay" is sometimes relevant at Broadsheet because some women are gay.

While you make a valid point, I think that feminism suffers from the perception that it is more about lesbian than hetrosexual interests: feminists have compared marriage to prison - but now that it's about lesbians, somehow marriage is laudable. Since political movements are often centered around perception, and since many young women refuse to identify themselves as feminist - precisely because it has a "man-hating", dyke-friendly perception (fed by the right, no doubt, but effectively), I can understand why some are uncomfortable with the overabundance of gay-centric stories appearing on Broadsheet.

Too much gay?

so, just counting the stories that are up right now which go back to 29 June, let's see:

pimps, female politicians, kuwaiti women voting, anti-choice bachelors sacraficing for unwed pregnant women, whether the glass ceiling is a myth, a reading list that doesn't include anything remotely gay, squeezing into small clothes, underwear to lift the bum, dads and pregnancy (soooooo gay), DIY ladies, and Melinda Gates.

Gay? NY Appeals kicks back gay marriage, the Chancellor of UCSC killed herself and was gay and a scientist. Corporations are offering benifits to gay employees, and.... maybe, I suppose, female golfing either gay or super femme...

WOW! SOOOOO GAY! SUPER GAY!

and, you know, stupid guys who can't count and easily dismiss feminism as maybe being gay don't help to the perception, do they? and, you know, it really matters if people think we're all gay because that diminishes the point, doesn't it? I mean, women can be free but dykes?! yuck... they don't like the penis and that's wierd! the very fact that you defend the position of someone who's weirded out about gay stuff being mentioned in a "feminist" blog shows one thing... one thing only... and, it isn't you logic skills:

clue-less

Agreed that feminism has been misconstrued by many people. Some feminists have compared marriage to prison; some are anti-sex; some believe all sex is rape. However, some feminists believe that women should choose how to live their lives (get married or not to a man or a woman, have sex or not to a man or a woman, work don't work, wear make-up, etc) and are supportive of women's autonomy. It's definitely easy to vilify feminists and to pigeon-hole their/our beliefs thereby invalidating what feminists stand for, but that is precisely my point. Feminism is far more easily miscontrued than it is defined and that is exactly why I felt compelled to respond to Nicole's post. I wasn't trying to take her to task but rather lend a different perspective.

Two other points I'd like to make: 1)I don't know that I would necessarily qualify the occasional post about gay rights as an "overabundance" (but if at all possible I'd be curious to see the statistic of gay-related to non-gay related Broadsheet articles if any of the editors could make the time to oblige...); 2) With specific regard to the man-hating, dyke-friendly (btw what's wrong with dyke friendly?), marriage-is-prison take on feminism that many people may have. That point got me thinking. Whether you're Republican, Democrat or Dixiecrat, I think most agree at this point that Pat Robertson is a crack-pot. I'd be curious to know if there are any Broadsheet writers out there who would agree with any of what he says. Well, his now infamous quote ("The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians") is well-bound into your description of a common take on feminism--in fact I think it was Pat Robertson who mold and define feminism for the masses. So I have to ask, when are we thinking people going to consciously reject that view and define feminism for ourselves?