Didn’t know we are suffering from under-population.

So let’s design a contract that people must sign that they will bear children if they marry (should we come up with a specific number?) and perhaps we should add a time frame as to how long people can wait before they have their first child (maybe a year from their first anniversary?). Oh and how about defining how often they have to bring their children to church…Wait, let’s decide which church it can be too because if they bring them to one of those liberal churchs, you know the ones which don’t condemn gay people to hell, then this whole thing is for naught. I mean the point is to only propogate clones of ourselves, right? Because, people, this country is going to hell if we just let anyone marry.

There are tons of things wrong with this insipid article, but this one is pretty noteworthy – “The conversation about this secondary question, however, should not ignore the rather obvious fact that out of all the possible sexual behaviors of the human race, only one type can produce children."Does this mean that the only acceptable type of marriage in Blair’s eyes between a fertile woman and a fertile man? There are plenty of heterosexual people who get into marriages without the intent to produce offspring (either because they can’t or simply don’t want to). Are their marriages invalid? Should the government derecognize those because they aren’t busy reproducing? The whole, "no one else can produce children. Think about the children!” thing seems like a pretty flimsy argument to me.

Peter, you’re spot on — we do need to combat a “decline in a healthy marriage and family culture”! And you know how we can do that? By supporting more and more loving couples as they seek to enter into marriage. Extending marriage to homosexual couples increases the amount of dedicated couples in our country. I’m not really one to sound the alarm for a decline in family values, but if that’s your thing, then you’d be insane to be against gay marriage. I don’t think too many people are confused on what marriage is — a commitment between two people in love to stick together through sickness, death, etc. And the fact that both homosexuals and heterosexuals can marry does not empty the term marriage of its distinctiveness. It’s distinctive from the staggeringly high numbers of divorced couples (did you know that these bastions of family values, these heterosexuals, have it in them to get divorced?!). Perhaps you should ask the big questions about divorce before you string together bigoted sentences about the reasons there should be less love and marriage in our country.

Excellent article by Peter Blair. “THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!” thing seems pretty flimsy to me.“ This is one time when thinking about the children is more appropriate than on any other subject. Marriage is the most important factor affecting a child, where there are children and there is no marriage, statistically you get every relatively bad outcome know to mankind. Flimsy my butt.

“What is it to be married? To list the external conditions, we would say: living together, having and raising kids, having sex, receiving tax benefits.”

A gay couple is not inherently incapable of doing all of these things (legally, incapable, yes). Do you need to give birth to a child to for it to be yours?

In addition, since you seem to be implying that gay marriage shouldn’t be recognized as a homosexual sexual union cannot produce children, I’m wondering how you feel about the marriage of older couples past childbearing age, couples in which one of the partners is sterile, etc. Should married women be allowed birth control?

Hyperbole aside, your hamhanded attempts to define marriage in a manner that deliberately excludes a specific portion of the population seem to miss the point of marriage entirely and may reflect the conceptual and ideological causes of this “decline in a healthy marriage.” Marriage may be a political and legal construct and a form of social organization, but at its core it is a commitment of support, connection, and kinship- a commitment gay couples are just as capable of making as straight couples.

If Blair wants to come out against gay marriage then he should do so and not hide behind this amorphous argument that says pretty much nothing. Marriage does have a distinctive quality that sets it apart from other relationships. At it’s core it is supposed to signify that two persons love each other so much that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. I find it incredibly telling that the idea of love never at any point enters into Blair’s discussion of marriage. Does a state have an interest in regulating marriage as an institution for raising children? Sure, but this in no way excludes gays from the equation. Unless Blair wants to argue that a gay couple inherently can’t raise children as well as a straight couple. Again, if he wants to make that argument, then he should do it and should be prepared for the inevitable backlash against such an argument.

Ultimately, this is an article of cowardice. If you cannot articulate and defend your convictions in the first place, you should not have convictions to begin with.

I don’t agree with Peter about gay marriage, but I’ll always admire him for having the courage to speak his mind in the face of the onslaught of rude, dismissive, and pathetic attacks which have already started in the comments above me. Calling him a bigot and suggesting he hasn’t “asked the big questions about divorce” are absolutely ridiculous. Peter’s arguments are valid and deserve a real response, something the PC police are unable to provide because they’ve never taken the time to question their own assumptions.

I just have one point: you imply that there is a causal relationship between the supposed decline in the health of marriage in the United States over the past half century or so. How do you measure a healthy marriage? I think any discussion of the validity of that point has to begin there. Also, it would be really helpful if you would include links to the studies you referenced. Most readers probably don’t have the time to Google them, only to find them behind some sort of pay wall.

Come on New Hampshire. Your neighbors in Maine are counting on you to not let this hateful, bigoted reversal of marriage equality get passed by your legislators. We, here, are still shamed by the results of our own vote three years ago. And when the dust had settled, we realized that it was because of outside hate-filled organizations such as NOM (National Organization for Marriage) that we lost all sense of our own independence; their lies and fear mongering were just overwhelming. Well, we won’t let it happen again and we plead with you not to let it happen to you.