Gender Diversity

The state of Utah is digging deep on why marriage should be betwewen a man and a woman.  Kind of ironic when you remember their polygamist past, and their extended cohabitating families today.  It is not only that I believe polygamy subjugates women and creates power struggles within families.  It is that while the husbands age, their subequent wives remain 14 years old, and that is institutionalized child abuse.  So not a big fan of their history with marriage.

Now they are defending marriage as between a man and a woman--the judge already told them how he feels about the fact that children should live with their biological parents, and that marriage encourages that.  The evidence for the later is not strong, and it is not an argument against same sex marriage--why should those biological children not grow up within a marriage?  It is not like Utah doesn't have divorce, and there are many children living with one biological parent and one non-biological parent.  The court laughed at the idea that a man and a woman are the best pair to raise children--no expert supports that contention so Utah went with the statement that they don't listen to experts.  Lovely.

The final argument is the one that seemed more at home in The Onion instead of the New York Times. That is that the Supreme Court has ruled that diversity of all sorts is of value and importance in education, and therefore Utah feels that gender diversity in marriage is equally important. The court did not mandate that the diversity of any particular group need reflect their representation in the population, and I would argue that we already have gender diversity in marriage to match that in education.  There are single sex institutions of learning that continue to exist, and we do not deeem those educated there to have inferior knowledge. We allow that option.  Then  there is the more troubling problem of gender diversity within the family.  If in fact Utah thinks that gender diversity is paramount, will families like mine, with 4 boys, be forced to give up our children to families that lack the Y-chromosome?  Would we need to trade for girls?  If we are keeping marriage equivalent, what is to prevent the family from being forced to do so?  Would two of my boys go to a marriage with two women?  Then they would have gender diversity.  Marital equality is a civil rights issue, that is for certain, but this just seems like an odd and potentially hazardous argument.