The following article was written by Roxann Ploss, a WPAN Steering Committee member.

California’s Supreme Court handed down a decision today which, I believe, it collectively and individually will live to regret. In my mind, it was not about whether Proposition 8 should or should not be overruled….but whether it should or should not have been on the ballot at all. What is even more amazing to me however, is that California’s heterosexual majority does not seem to understand that it can be as “burned” in the future as the homosexual community is now.

Miscegenation was once illegal; as a teenager living in Virginia, I distinctly remember reading the Washington Post article about a black man married to a white woman being arrested and jailed. I asked my less-than-liberal parents how this could be done. Though “religious” and “conservative”, they too were non-plussed and could only say “it’s the law in that state”.

That was as ridiculous then as THIS decision is now. How dare the government decide what constitutes a union of two PEOPLE? (The arguments in 2008 that this would lead to human-animal “marriages” were lunatic to say the least.) Those who use the Bible as the obiter dicta here have opened the door to nightmarish potentials. That book, remember, says that marriage is for procreation.

What about the little old widow who can’t afford to risk her Social Security check in order to marry her boyfriend? By definition, then, she is “living in sin”. The heterosexual couple happily continuing their union without benefit of marriage would be, apparently, be equally sinful. To many, divorce is “sinful”, as well; if this results in either spouse having extramarital affairs, should they be thrown in jail? How many nervous breakdowns or, indeed, murders can be attributed to loveless marriages between heterosexuals? Would that have meant, since I didn’t particularly want to have children, it would not have been legal for me to marry either of the two men I’ve deeply loved in my lifetime? And I wonder if those highly moral proponents of same-sex marriage will one day seek to outlaw the marriage of proclaimed atheists?

Many immigrant Asian and Muslim parents believe it is their religious and cultural right to force pre-arranged marriages on their children; incredibly, the same Christian right who find this forced union unacceptable are the ones who insist that two loving people cannot consent to marriage! Are they, then, the arbiters of what constitutes “grounds” for marriage as well as who can marry whom?

I find that stance to be as unintelligible as the decision of the high court to recognize the marriages of the 18,000 married same sex couples who were wed last year, but will then say no one else of the same sex can marry from now on. Define marriage for me, PLEASE!!!! Is the primary purpose for procreation? Is it a declaration of love between two people? Is it a legal and binding contract? Is it a business arrangement made for the mutual benefit of two families? A combination of any two of the above would eliminate, if implemented, an awful lot of future weddings.

This has all spun out of control. I repeat: government and court officials should stick to cleaning up their own dirty closets and stay out of everyone else’s bedrooms.