An attorney general can't possibly stand up and make that case and keep a straight face these days, seeing how a marriage is a state-sanctioned contract that is violated and broken with such boring regularity that it is basically meaningless. Heck -- there is even an entire branch of the legal profession (divorce law) that was created specifically to deal with all of the cases in which these contracts must be "undone."
You cannot really disagree that the state has no onterest in marriage: the tax deducts, the right of inheritance and the rest all develope stability.
Yes, I can. If you need any proof of this, just realize that families were far more stable -- and homosexual marriage such a bizarre notion that nobody even thought about it -- when people got married without any formal government recognition at all.
The state really has no BUSINESS in marriage. Tax deductions are related to a state function (taxation of income) that is barely even legitimate in my eyes. Rights of inheritance can be given to anyone with the proper documentation (regardless of family relations). And as I pointed out previously, the notion that there is anything resembling "stability" in heterosexual marriage in New Jersey state law anymore is a joke.
Those are good points.
But the state instituted the marriage benefits to encourage and abet family stability. That it doesn't work doesn't mean they are wrong. [Lots of things are wrong but you do not wipe away the laws with an "oh well" wave.]
And the state has a vital interest in the raising of its citizens...[we have asked them to take that interest. We demanded things like immunizations for all children, for example, because on a very base level, we don't want someone else's kids getting ours sick. The state agrees because prevention is better than treatment.]
But allowing homosexuals the full rights and priveleges of their decision to mock and mimic marriage is a very wrong message to give to our children. And the state should have made this argument. Those parents who conceive children for the express purpose of raising them in a homosexual setting should be charged with abuse...not pitied and abetted by the state.
I could not believe the tortuous logic of the opinion and the blatant disregard for their own laws.
My suspicion is the the NJ AG didn't care to fight this issue very hard.
Too bad for NJ.
"when people got married without any formal government recognition at all. "
When was this? Civil marriage predates religious marriage by about 1000 years in western history.