By Kenneth Brooks

June 20, 2010

Attorneys made final arguments in federal court about the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 that banned marriage by gay and lesbian couples. The purpose for the lawsuit against Prop 8 was to challenge its assault on the marriage rights of same-sex couples. However, Proposition 8 attacks all people’s basic human rights of marriage and procreation when it presumes government authority over them.

Mr. Olson argued that Proposition 8 takes away same-sex couples constitutional right to liberty, privacy, association, and sexual intimacy. Mr. Cooper countered that marriage was necessary for the survival of the race and that society would change the nature of marriage in unpredictable ways if it included same-sex unions in the definition.

Mr. Cooper added that government’s purpose for marriage has been to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring stable unions to increase the likelihood that their parents will raise any offspring. He said, “Again, we know from all of the authorities, the purpose of marriage is to provide society's approval to that sexual relationship and to the actual production of children. As Justice Stevens said in his dissenting opinion in the Bowers case, “marriage is a license to cohabit and to produce legitimate children.”