Greg Abbott: Banning Gay Marriage Reduces Out-Of-Wedlock Births

The Texas Republican nominee for governor says that his state’s ban on same-sex marriage reduces out-of-wedlock births among heterosexuals.

In a brief filed with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, Attorney General Greg Abbott claims that the State of Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage reduces out-of-wedlock births, and legalizing same-sex marriage would make different-sex couples less interested in marrying and having children.

Texas’s same-sex marriage laws “are rationally related to the State’s interest in reducing unplanned out-of-wedlock births,” Abbott, who is running for governor against Wendy Davis, claims in the brief, which was filed on Friday.

LOOK: Wendy Davis Slams Greg Abbott On Social Issues In Texas Debate (Video)

Abbott makes a false cost-benefit analysis, wholly ignoring the actual civil rights issues that are central to legal arguments supporting marriage equality.

“Texas’s marriage laws are rationally related to the State’s interest in encouraging couples to produce new offspring, which are needed to ensure economic growth and the survival of the human race.”

“By channeling procreative heterosexual intercourse into marriage,” Abbott adds, “Texas’s marriage laws reduce unplanned out-of-wedlock births and the costs that those births impose on society. Recognizing same-sex marriage does not advance this interest because same-sex unions do not result in pregnancy.”

Of course, many same-sex couples adopt the very children created by the “unplanned out-of-wedlock births” of different-gender coupling, and those families deserve the same rights and protections different-sex couples are automatically granted.

“There is no ‘fundamental right’ to same-sex marriage,” Abbott claims. He also states “Texas’s marriage laws do not expressly classify based on sexual orientation,” meaning that he says they are constitutional because they don’t specifically apply only to gay and bisexual people.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Abbott “denied that other courts’ decisions to overturn gay marriage bans represented salient precedent, saying these rulings simply represented the “purely subjective” beliefs of a few judges.” 

Same-sex marriage has won over 40 decisions in courts since the supreme Court overturned DOMA in 2013.

 

Image via Flickr

 

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