(snip)"Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.
All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits."(snip)
"“For many years, social conservatives have claimed that marriage exists solely for the purpose of procreation ... The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine," said WA-DOMA organizer Gregory Gadow in a printed statement. “If same-sex couples should be barred from marriage because they can not have children together, it follows that all couples who cannot or will not have children together should equally be barred from marriage."(snip)
From an economic standpoint, the 'argument' of course is that the tax breaks and employee benefits granted to married persons are motivated by a basic gov't desire to subsidize the procreation of children. Those supporting this proposal raise the legal point that providing such gov't subsidies to married heterosexual couples who do not want to have children or who cannot have children but not providing similar gov't subsidies to gay couples amounts to 'unequal treatment under the law'.
It will be interesting to see where this goes, as there could be some MAJOR economic overtones i.e. the repealing of lower tax rates for young hetero couples who are childless, repealing of lower tax rates for retired hetero couples etc.





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