OK still on the Prop 8 trial –I wanted to share this 29 year old woman’s take on the matter. Here is the text of Kristen Quay of Oakland, California in a Letter to the editor in January 18th’s San Francisco Chronicle:
“Real threat: unmarried parents”
“I am 29 years old, college educated and in a professional career. Most of my friends and acquaintances share these same demographic traits.
Well over half of my acquaintances who have children share another interesting trait: They either are not married or were not married at the time their child was conceived. At that point, the only real incentive to marry seems to be to reap health insurance and financial benefits. Many never bother to get married at all.
I find it interesting that the Proposition 8 supporters do not seem to find this trend nearly so much of a threat to the institution of marriage as two people of the same sex who love each other. Could it be because an astonishing number of single-parent heterosexuals still give their money and support to the church, as they do here in Oakland?
I’d love to see what would happen if churches turned all single parents (and their impressionable children) out of their congregations on the same moral grounds they use against gay people. If marriage is interpreted to exist solely for the purpose of procreation, it is the modern heterosexual who has succeeded in rendering marriage obsolete.” <italics mine>
I wonder what proponents of Prop 8 would say to that…..Recent research and this kind of editorial tell us that for so many people marriage is no longer defined as about procreation. So why is it so hard for some people to accept? Because if they accept this as reality, they would have to accept same-sex marriage as well as quit passing judgment on marriages without children by choice. It is high time for both.
To quote Ms Quay, other “modern heterosexuals” out there–do you agree with her take? Why or why not?