>
> The perfect case to encourage them might be
> Littleton v. Prange, in
> which the San Antonio district court, and the Fourth
> Court of Appeals
> upheld, said that what constituted a legal "man" and
> legal "woman"
> with the right to marry should be determined by the
> construct of
> one's DNA.
>
> Heh, that'll confuse 'em, won't it.
I have not read this case, but while there is a respectable legal argument to be made that in the common and for that matter thecivil/con law tradition "marriage" has meant man-woman unions for a thousand years, there isn't much authority in the law for the idae the Blackstone and Coke and Glanville (great common law lawyers and legal scholars of previous centuries) had DNA in mind. There is an argument based on deep considerations in philosophy of language that that doesn't matter, but I rather doubt that legal decisions should turn on whether the Kropke-Putnam causal theory of reference is true.
Obviously, the fact, if it is a fact, that marriage was heterosexual in traditional law does not remotely settle the moral, political, or even the contemporary US legal issue of whether gay marriage should be authorized today. Morally, obviously it should. Legally, after the S.Ct's last to cases striking down discrimination against gays as irrational, there is a strong case to be made that the Constitution now upholds gay marriage. Politically, though, it's not so clear that it's good to have this issue come to a head before the election. It brings all the rats out of the walls and mobilizes the loonies, while risking polarization of the people in the center. Well, it's out now, so we will see what difference it makes, if any.
jks
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