PhoboQuotable - Maggie Gallagher

"The obvious truth, repeated over and over again in the legal history of marriage in the U.S., is that the government thought marriage mattered because marital unions produce and protect children. They do this in two ways: First, by creating faithful, exclusive, enduring sexual unions that create the best context fo conceiving children. And second, by preventing (if the man and woman are faithful) the default harms of unregulated opposite-sex union: many fatherless children, many overburdened mothers, many men disconnected from family life.

"This is the argument that Ted Olson told Newsweek 'cannot be taken seriously.' Good luck with that, Ted. Seven million Californians took it very seriously, and so do the majority of state courts that have considered it, several international human rights courts, and of course every major faith tradition.

"On Christianity and marriage, San Francisco attorney Therese Stewart worked hard to establish that Catholics’ and Baptists’ views on marriage and sex are illegitimate bigotry. She actually had Yale Prof. George Chauncey read into the record official statements by the Vatican and by the Southern Baptist Convention. I had to laugh to keep from crying. This is the city that in an official resolution condemned the Catholic Church and urged a sitting Catholic archbishop to “defy” his own faith and side with the City Council’s on gay adoption. Could gay-marriage advocates try any harder to fuel the perception that a victory for gay marriage requires the defeat of religious liberty, tolerance, and civility for Christianity and other traditional faiths?" - Maggie Gallagher, recapping the first week of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger.