Live Blog Archive
What’s the Evidence that Marriage is About Procreation?
Judge Walker asks, “What's the evidence?”
Cooper: "The evidence is overwhelming, what Congress calls “responsible procreation” is at the heart of the state’s interest in regulating marriage.
The evidence before you shows what sociologist Kingsley Davis has described as a universal definition of marriage: “social recognition and approval of a couple engaging in sexual intercourse and bearing and raising children.”
Blackstone: “Two great relations, husband and wife, founded in nature but modified in civil society, with prescribing the manner in which that parent and child, which is consequential to that of marriage being its principle end and design. It is by virtue of this relation that infants are maintained, protected and educated.”
Stevens in his dissent in Bowers: Marriage is a license to cohabit and produce children, this understanding of marriage is before you
Walker: I don’t mean to be flip but Blackstone didn’t testify. What testimony in this case?
Cooper: This evidence is before you. But Blankenhorn brought it before you. You don’t have to have evidence from these authorities. This is in the cases themselves. The cases recognize this, one after another.
Evidence of this point, if one court after another has recognized that procreation is the purpose.
Let me turn to the California cases on this: “The first purpose of matrimony by the laws of nature and society is procreation”
[proceeds to cite long line of cases, California, Congress’s words in DOMA, and other court decisions]
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