response 168 of 293:

Dec 14 16:14 UTC 2003

Re resp:163:
> Government's interest in marriage and need to control it is partly
> due  to concerns for children.  Who takes care of the kids?  This
> is  important, but pretty much only for heterosexual marriages.

But we don't limit heterosexual marriage to people who are fertile.

> There are employment benefits for married people.  These benefits
> are  getting quickly weaker, even now.  If you don't think it
> would hurt married couples to have a lot of what are currently
> known as "domestic partnerships" declared "marriages", you just
> simply aren't paying attention to what the insurance companies
> are doing now.

So basically, you're justifying discrimination as a way to artificially
limit the demand for insurance?  Besides, I'm not convinced the impact
would be that great -- I suspect the majority of homosexual partnerships
are two-income households, and the number of partnerships nationwide is
pretty small compared to the overall population.