Washington & Same-Sex Marriage

Today's Washington State Supreme Court decision against same-sex marriage is quite intellectually vapid, and you only need to read a few paragraphs in to see how the justices strove to find something--anything--to back up their personal prejudices. Here is the core of the decision:

In brief, unless a law is a grant of positive favoritism to a minority class, we apply the same constitutional analysis under the state constitution’s privileges and immunities clause that is applied under the federal constitution’s equal protection clause. DOMA does not grant a privilege or immunity to a favored minority class, and we accordingly apply the federal analysis. The plaintiffs have not established that they are members of a suspect class or that they have a fundamental right to marriage that includes the right to marry a person of the same sex. Therefore, we apply the highly deferential rational basis standard of review to the legislature’s decision that only opposite-sex couples are entitled to civil marriage in this state. Under this standard, DOMA is constitutional because the legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children’s biological parents. Allowing same-sex couples to marry does not, in the legislature’s view, further these purposes. Accordingly, there is no violation of the privileges and immunities clause.

Yes, God knows, the human race would miserably fail to procreate itself if a tiny minority of individuals were allowed to love members of the same gender, the continued existence of the human race being in such precarious position and all. And logically speaking the the marital existence of all childless or post-menapausal couples should not be granted either. What a joke.

To be clear: these justices are bigots and homophobes (Sartre: "Only actions determine intentions"), probably on account of their advanced age. But that is no real excuse. Their backwards views will, not so far into the future, be found to be as antiquated as the notion that whites can own black slaves, that women should not vote, or that that different races should not marry. It's only a matter of time, and history will remember who was on the wrong side. "Positive favoritism." What assholes.

Dissension from some right-thinking members of the court: "The plurality and concurrence condone blatant discrimination against Washington’s gay and lesbian citizens," Justice Fairhurst wrote, adding that the 1998 law "was motivated solely by animus toward homosexuals."

Justice Bobbe J. Bridge went further, equating the majority’s position with favoring racial discrimination. The majority, she wrote, contended "that it is not our place to require equality for Washington’s gay and lesbian citizens." Under that reasoning, she said, "there would have been no Brown v. Board of Education," the 1954 United States Supreme Court school desegregation case.