This has been going around… I got it from Shades of Grey.
1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.
7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.
Nik, I was assuming that by legitimacy you meant “legally the child of”. Did you have another definition in mind?
You couldn’t have meant the standard definition of “legitimacy”, which is simply “the child of two parents who are legally married”, because you’re arguing that a child of two parents who are legally married ought to be illegitimate unless that child is biologically the child of them both. So, what did you mean?
Follow-up: because you’re arguing that a child of two parents who are legally married ought to be illegitimate unless that child is biologically the child of them both
and you are arguing that if a child’s parents are not legally married is a legitimate child if the parents are the child’s biological parents. So you’ve discarded the standard definition of legitimacy, and I can’t see what else you could mean “legitimate child” to mean unless you mean “legally the child of”.
I’ve spotted an funny impliction of allowing same sex couples to marry, which some of you might appreciate.
At the moment marriages between same sex couples are automatically void. They never legally happened. So if someone finds the girl of his dreams, and later finds out she’s a man, they were never married and the marriage has no legal effect. (Yes – I know it’s bizarre but there are actual, if rather obscure, cases of this happening.) If the provision was removed, then the marriage is perfectly legal, and there would have to be a divorce after newlyweds have gone through the necessary waiting period.
Of course this would also cut both ways. If someone finds the girl of her dreams and it later transpires that she’s a man, the marriage would also be perfectly valid. And the same problem would arise.
The moral? If same sex couples can marry then some marriages will be valid even when one of the participants may have valid grounds for not wanting it to be. Maybe this supports the argument for two parallel institutions, rather than just deleting the provision that makes marriages between same sex couples void.
I don’t have time to read ALL the comments, but I did think this was an awesome list. My biggest logic issue with the whole thing is the “sanctity of marriage” argument ….
….. What about pre-nups? That’s basically starting off with the expectation that things aren’t gonna work. And THAT doesn’t detract from the seriousness of the committment?!?!?
So if someone finds the girl of his dreams, and later finds out she’s a man, they were never married and the marriage has no legal effect. (Yes – I know it’s bizarre but there are actual, if rather obscure, cases of this happening.) If the provision was removed, then the marriage is perfectly legal, and there would have to be a divorce after newlyweds have gone through the necessary waiting period.
Absolutely false. If you marry somebody & they turn out to have grossly misrepresented themselves, the marriage can be voided upon request. In other words, if you agreed to marry due to fraud or misrepresentation, your marriage can be voided.
No, an example is that the child of unmarried parents is illegitimate, but is still legally their child.
I’ll find and post a formal definition later.
This is how I understand it in the case that you mention. If a child is born to a woman who’s married, but isn’t the husband’s the child is illegitimate. It’s born into a marriage, but is not the child of the married couple. (If the wife then divorces the husband, and marries the father, it becomes the father’s legitimate child, and is not the ex-husband’s).
Adoption and donor conception rules build on this. A child to parties to married couple who are party to the measure is automatically made legitimate (regardless of biology), and is not (legally) the child of the adoptive parents or donor at all.
Sorry for the confusion.
Jake Squid;
I think there’s a difference between void and voidable. Void happens automatically. I’m not sure about the details of the deception provision, but to use the voidable provision you’d have to prove your case (on the balance of probabilities) to a court.
There’s a difference between “void ab initio” and a marriage which is voided upon application to the court. The difference is that a marriage that is “void ab initio” can never be recognized legally as a marriage whil one that is voided by the court, although once voided considered to never have happened, can be considered valid before being voided.
The difference between “void” & “voidable” is meaningless once a voidable marriage is voided. (Okay, “void” now sounds really silly and not even like a real word).
If a child is born to a woman who’s married, but isn’t the husband’s the child is illegitimate.
No. Only if the husband chooses to formally and legally repudiate the child. If a child is born to a mixed-sex married couple, the child is legitimate, and legally the child of husband and of wife: the law does not inquire who is biologically the child’s father. A husband can, if he can prove he isn’t biologically the child’s father, repudiate the child, which makes the child illegitimate, but nothing requires him to do so. You seem to be confused about this, but that’s the law, in both the US and the UK. Legitimacy doesn’t depend on biological fatherhood; it’s a legal relationship.
No, an example is that the child of unmarried parents is illegitimate, but is still legally their child.
So in fact, when you talk of adopted children and children conceived by donor being illegitimate, you mean that you want to make a meaningless distinction? You want the adopted child of a couple to be legally their child – that is, not legally the child of the bioparents – but to be known as illegitimate?
Being illegitimate will not in fact give the child any claim on their bioparents: illegitimacy has never had that function. In fact, historically, an illegitimate child legally had no parents – neither mother nor father.
If you want adopted children and children conceived by donor to be illegitimate, but still legally the children of their adoptive parents or of their mother and their mother’s partner, then the only “positive benefit” to adopted children and children conceived by donor is that they would be formally known as bastards.
I think there’s a difference between void and voidable. Void happens automatically.
Yes, and some couples see that as a problem.
Nik,
I guess you’re right that I really don’t understand what you are getting at, because it seems to me that you’re attempting to say that SSM is wrong because it would create families that are somehow wrong in your eyes. So you say it doesn’t have to be retroactive, but in essence you’re still placing judgement on my husband’s rearing, and consequently making assumptions about him that are highly suspect based on… what?
What exactly, leaving all legal reference aside, is your problem with SS families raising children?
I’m not posting here because I have a problem with gay people
For some reason, most homophobes say that: I suppose it’s because they perceive gay people as the problem, rather than their own bigotry creating “the problem”.
In any case, if you are claiming you have a problem with adoption in general, can you please answer the question: what positive benefits do you claim for Regina Louise because she wasn’t adopted?
I though most states in the US had done away with legal “illigetimacy”. I know for a fact that Louisiana is one of the few states that still recognizes illegetimaticy. The state strives so hard to prevent children from being born “a bastard” that it will assign legal parentage to a father even if the mother and father were separated at the time of conception.
Because of the states concern for my child’s status, I now have a son that has two “legal” fathers. And in order to fix this, my husband has to do an “interfamily adoption” to fix this irritation. It’s not really an irritation for myself or for my son, because my ex isn’t going to push the issue. But it doesn mean that my son is legally entitled to a part of my ex’s estate when that time comes.
Sorry to be rambling, but I’m recovering from the flu and not all here.
The right to support from her bioparents and the right to inherit from her bioparents.
I’m sure you’re going to say this doesn’t compensate for being abused. You’re right, but we don’t have to weigh the two up. We could use a guardianship system – she could be put into the permanent care of others without making her parents legal strangers to her. That would allow her to maintain the rights that she would have lost had she been adopted. My objection to the legitmacy of adoptees is that it at the heart of the idea of pretending the old parents never happened. You’re supporting a system which absolves child abusers of the responsibility of financially supporting their children.
The “presumption of legitimacy” is a bit like the “presumption of innocence”. You try to sort people into the right groups, but the system is imperfect – and because of it some people who are illegitimate are wrongly classified as legitimate by the law, just as some of the guilty are wrongly classified as innocent. Sometimes a child is regarded as legitimate because a married couple conspire to hide adultery or the husband is deceived into thinking he is the father. But it’s not correct that biological fatherhood has nothing to do with legitimacy; any more than legal guilt has nothing to do with whether you committed a crime.
It’s simply untrue that the child is legitimate only if the husband legally repudiates the child. Illegitimacy can be demonstrated by a variety of people: such as the mother, the father, and the child. The idea that a man gets fathership of a child because he’s married to the mother – at the expense of the rights of the real father and the child to know his father – is just medieval. (Mendy’s right that some US states are the last holdout of this tradition.)
But Regina Louise was NOT adopted, so by your logic, she should of received the above two items. It is pretty obvious that she did not get support from her bioparents, nor did she inherit from them. She is a terrific example of exactly what you seem to advocate – no legal adoption, stuck as a ward of the state forever. I’m very puzzled as to why you think that a little bit of monetary support is more important than actually being a part of a family.
You are aware, also, that no law compels parents to leave their estate to their children, aren’t you? So even in your post-adoption world, there is no guarantee that the child would even inherit a dime from the bioparent. So now you’ve made this poor kid grow up without a family, all for some payoff after the kid has grown up that may or may not be there.
Your “legal guardianship” solution sounds barbaric for children. Basically you are saying that a certain class of children who had the misfortune of being born to people who don’t want them must go through life without having a real family they can call their own, living in some sort of limbo between their “legal guardians” and their bioparents. I can’t fathom how this is supposed to be a good thing for kids.
Finally, perhaps you don’t know it, but there already ARE adoption options that don’t pretend that the bio-parents never happened. It is called open adoption. Typically, the birth mother chooses the family for her child. They draw up some sort of agreement allowing a certain amount of contact between the birth parent and the child. Everyone knows the names of who is involved. In this scenario, there is certainly nothing stopping the birth parent from including the child in her will and thus allowing the child to inherit from her, but the adoptive parents are the fully legal parents.
Again, you seem to think that a little bit of money is more important than actually living with someone you get to call “mom” or “dad”. I just can’t fathom that. I guess I just have known enough actual adopted people that I don’t see biology as the single most important factor that defines a family.
(1) Regina Louise clearly had the *right* to support and to inherit from her bioparents. The system just failed to enforce them (or there was no money to receive).
(2) Laws do exist which prevent you from doing things such as leaving all your money to your mistress, and leaving your wife or dependent children with nothing. You are simply unaware of them. If you die without a will there are also laws which specify the default for administering your estate and which give your children priority.
(3) “I’m very puzzled as to why you think that a little bit of monetary support is more important than actually being a part of a family.” I don’t think monetary support is more important that a family, I just don’t think we need to choose between the two.
(4) You’re arguing against a figment of your imagination, rather than my actual position. I’m not at all suggesting that children remain wards of the state or aren’t placed in a permenant family. I’m simply saying that doing things like falsifiying birth certificates and cutting all legal ties with the bioparents is not needed.
(5) I’m glad you brought up open adoption. It’s a move in the right direction. It’s still a partial juryrigged solution for voluntary adoptions. But not everyone get to choose whether an adoption takes place. And not everyone who doesn’t get to choose is blame worthy. If the adoption isn’t your choice you don’t get to pick the birth parents and get to make a contract with them.
(6) Even if identities are known there are things which stop the birth parent from allowing the child to inherit from her. Tax law puts your children in a different position regarding exemptions to people who aren’t your children. And as far as the law is concerned your adopted children are strangers.
Good grief — everytime someone asks you what are the benefits of NOT being legally adopted, you state two reasons that are all about money. Is it any wonder that it seems that you value some possible monetary support and inheiritance over the benefit of being legally related to the people raising you?
Regarding the Regina Louise story, I am still not convinced that receiving some sort of inheiritance from her bioparent would have compensated for growing up without a family.
I simply don’t see how your system can work. What is a “permanent family” if the parents can’t become legal parents of the child? Who has control over all the day-to-day parenting things, the “guardian” or the “real parent?” If the guardian wants the kid to go to school A but the bioparent prefers school B, who decides? Are the guardians essentially just babysitters, taking care of the child since the bioparent can’t/didn’t want to? Do they have to negotiate all the major decisions with the bioparent? How is that good for the child? Since the bioparent is still the legal parent, can she change her mind and claim custody at any time?
If the guardians DO have control, well, how is this any different from an open adoption? Other than the fact that the child can now inherit from someone he/she is not living with? Keeping in mind that this inheritance will probably come long after the kid has grown up.
As for the tax issues with inheiritance, that is a good point. So, in your system, how would this work? Would the child be able to inheirit as a child from BOTH the guardian and the bioparent, or just one of them? Should the guardians be required to treat their own bio-children and “adopted” children differently in THEIR wills?
I don’t think monetary support is more important that a family, I just don’t think we need to choose between the two.
Oh, come off it, Nik. You are choosing between the two, and you are saying that monetary support is more important. I asked you to identify the positive benefits for Regina Louise in not being adopted: and you came up with her having the legal right to monetary support and a hypothetical inheritance. You are saying that money is more important that having a real family.
I’m not at all suggesting that children remain wards of the state or aren’t placed in a permenant family.
Actually, that’s precisely what you’re saying. You’re arguing that adoption is bad: therefore, for children whose parents abandon them or abuse them, you are arguing that, for the sake of the money they’re entitled to (but may never get) they ought to remain wards of the state and – even if they get a temporary placement – never be legally adopted. The situation Regina Louise was in: that’s why I asked you to come up with positive benefits for her, and what you came up with was that she had the legal right to monetary support.
You try to sort people into the right groups, but the system is imperfect – and because of it some people who are illegitimate are wrongly classified as legitimate by the law, just as some of the guilty are wrongly classified as innocent.
Guilt and innocence matter, of course; but in today’s society, illegitimate/legitimate are virtually meaningless terms. You seem to be confused, as I said before, between “legally the child of” and the classic meaning of legitimate “child born to a married couple”. By either definition, however, a child classified as legitimate by the law is legitimate – that’s how legitimacy works. You’re trying to mix up questions of biological parentage with legitimacy, which really don’t belong there.
Illegitimacy can be demonstrated by a variety of people: such as the mother, the father, and the child. The idea that a man gets fathership of a child because he’s married to the mother – at the expense of the rights of the real father and the child to know his father – is just medieval.
Oh dear, Nik, you really do need to study a little law. The facts are the facts.
You’re right that either the mother or her husband could assert that the child has another father than the husband.
But, if mother and husband both assert that the child is theirs, and their names go on the child’s birth certificate is the child’s parents, the child is legitimate, and legally the child of both mother and husband. It’s not medieval, but only the law prior to DNA tests, that unless the mother’s husband could prove her child was not his – that he was absolutely not having sex with her at the time the child was conceived, or (if this was after when blood-group inheritance testing was understood) if he could prove that the child could not be his by blood group testing, then he was the child’s legal father. We’re not talking about medieval times: we’re talking about the recent past.
A man who isn’t married to the mother who claims to be the child’s father has no legal claim on the child, and no right to demand DNA tests of the child to prove his claim.
Bollocks I am. Given a choice between monetary support and an abusive child being adopted, I’d choose adoption. That isn’t a choice I should have to make, there’s no reason she shouldn’t have had a new family and the rights to support from her old one. Why are you supporting the right of child abusers not to financially support their children?
This is just not true. In fact there are (two) famous recent examples of it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4320827.stm
Arguments over what is the case aside, do you think the above situation should be the case?
Because I don’t see any way to make it workable without putting the child in danger.
If bioparent is paying child support for the child, I would expect that bioparent is going to expect something in return — visitation, decision-making authority for certain matters, veto power over where the “guardians” take the child, etc. So basically, in exchange for a few dollars (how much $$ do you expect someone who gave up a child to have), you’re handing control over the child to an abuser.
If we’re talking about people who have had their children removed against their will, the danger is even greater, since the bioparent is REALLY going to resent having to send those checks out.
nik: Given a choice between monetary support and an abusive child being adopted, I’d choose adoption.
That’s not what you said in the case of Regina Louise. For Regina Louise, you said her advantage was the right to financial support – not even that she actually got it; just that she had a right to it. Of course, if she’d been adopted, she would have had the right to financial support from her adoptive mother – and would have got financial support, along with what you may consider to be of less value than money, but others think otherwise: love and caring.
Why are you supporting the right of child abusers not to financially support their children?
Why are you supporting the right of child abusers to remain in legal control of their children’s lives?
This is just not true. In fact there are (two) famous recent examples of it.
Did you miss a necessary point in this news story: “Because of uncertainty about paternity, several weeks ago it was agreed with Mrs Quinn that a DNA test would be carried out. ”
In what world do you live that you imagine it is lawful for someone who is no legal relation to a minor child to demand that a DNA sample shall be taken from that child without the consent of the child’s legal guardians?
Jes;
There are two options:
(1) Adoption. Child has right to financial support from adoptive parents (and love and caring from adoptive parents).
(2) Permanent Guardianship. Child has right to financial support from guardians and bioparents (and love and caring from guardians).
I think (1) is better than (2). I think in cases where the parents aren’t abusive there could be even greater advantages. As far as I can see, all you’re going is insinuating that .
How about a world in which people who are the child’s parents should have a legal relation to the child? I realise that’s not a situation you approve of, but it is the world we live in. It the earlier link wasn’t explicit enough. How about this one?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4066565.stm
Please let me know if you can reconcile this with you opinion that “A man who isn’t married to the mother who claims to be the child’s father has no legal claim on the child, and no right to demand DNA tests of the child to prove his claim. “
SaraS;
In situations where one parent has abused the child, but the other has not, courts regularly remove all control over the child from the abusive parent. But because the child hasn’t been adopted the abusive parent still remains a legal parent, and is still liable for support. I think your fears are unfounded, as a situation similar to the one proposed is already happening without the problems you anticipate.
Sorry for the broken sentence above. As far as I can see, all you’re going is insinuating that adoptive parents will only be able to love the children they take in if the childen are utterly cut off from their bioparents.
nik: I think (1) is better than (2).
So do I. So basically, you’re completely retracting everything you said earlier? Okay.
As far as I can see, all you’re going is insinuating that adoptive parents will only be able to love the children they take in if the childen are utterly cut off from their bioparents.
No, you’re making that up completely – presumably because your earlier opinion, which you say you have now abandoned, that money trumps love, embarrasses you. Good. You should be embarrassed.
How about a world in which people who are the child’s parents should have a legal relation to the child?
They do. A child’s parents have a legal relationship to the child. A child’s bioparents don’t, necessarily. That’s the world we both live in. Legal relationship trumps genetic relationship.
Q&A: Blunkett paternity battle
Good grief. So, basically, any man at all has a right to demand genetic tests of any child, against the will of the child’s parents, if he claims that he’s the child’s father? How… revolting, and how intrusive. No, I hadn’t realized that: I assumed that it would be necessary to get the consent of at least one of the child’s parents before it would be legal to take genetic samples from the child. I was aware that Kimberly Quinn had consented.
Jes, I got (1) and (2) the wrong way around. I shouldn’t have speedwrote the post. (2) is better than (1).
Re: Blunkett/Quinn.
In law the child’s parents are the bioparents (aside from adoption/donation). Sometimes the bioparents are falsely identified, so someone wrongly gets put down as the father. But the principle is quite clear.
If you want to spell out your problem with a strict biological approach to parenthood I love to here them. But I’m not sure how any other situation is defensible.
Nik: In law the child’s parents are the bioparents
In law, the child’s parents are the parents named on the birth certificate.
But I’m not sure how any other situation is defensible.
Then you need to study the law a little more: the principle that a child’s legal parents need not be a child’s bioparents is quite clearly defended in law. I don’t have time or energy to re-educate you.
Jesurgilsac writes:
I think that’s the point of demanding genetic tests — establishing that he is, in fact, the child’s parent. Whether the appropriate legal safeguards can be established to prevent unrelated men from demanding blood tests of unrelated children is a different matter.
And no, names on birth certificates don’t create an unrebuttable presumption of paternity in all jurisdictions. Cites on request.
Whether the appropriate legal safeguards can be established to prevent unrelated men from demanding blood tests of unrelated children is a different matter.
Well, plainly not. Of course this has nothing whatsoever to do with same-sex marriage (neither does nik’s feeling that children ought to be forced to stay in contact with abusive parents, of course), but I have to say that I am shocked and appalled if the law permits a man with no legal relationship to a child to demand DNA tests.
Jesurgilsac writes:
Well, it’s been that way in many jurisdictions for quite a while. It’s how paternity is established. In my state, a biological father who is not acknowledged by the child’s mother as the biological father can open a case through the state AG’s office. To the best of my knowledge this is the most common legal situation. A very few states have an unrebuttable presumption of paternity on the husband, assuming the mother is married to someone other than the child’s biological father.
And, yes, this has nothing to do with SSM.
So any Joe Blow could claim paternity of my husband’s and my children and require a DNA test to settle the question? Even if I had never seen him in my life? What a bizarre thought. I can’t imagine why anyone would, given that unless my husband has an unknown identical twin out there somewhere the test would be negative, but it would indeed be creepy and intrusive. I suppose the presumption is that no man would make such a claim just for the hell of it.
Lu: I suppose the presumption is that no man would make such a claim just for the hell of it.
You hope. I think it could get spooky if a stalker realized that he could harass a woman with a child by this method, perfectly legally. Ugh.
Jes;
I think your mistaken about birth certificates. The idea is that the child’s biological father is named on them. Not that the mother gets a free pick of which man she wants to be the father – it’s a legal document – deliberately falsely naming someone is perjury.
If someone’s named on the birth certificate it’s presumed that he’s the father (because both him and the mother give testimony to that effect). But if this is shown to be false he no longer his parental responsibility ends.
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/nm/scotland/family_parent/family_family_scotland/birth_certificates_scotland.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1649600,00.html
This is the flip side of men being identified against their will as fathers for child support, that’s also an intrusion. Though not one you get people fuming about.
So any Joe Blow could claim paternity of my husband’s and my children and require a DNA test to settle the question?
It depends on your state. Some states do not allow a third party to raise a paternity claim to a married couple’s child. (that is, they don’t allow Alleged Boyfriend to claim that he is the actual father of Husband’s child with Wife.)
4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
* ok first of all, what era are you living in? divorce is not illegal, blacks can marry whites.. and women are not property. If you think that then you deserve a swift kick in the a– rear.
&
8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
* religions vary from christianity ( ugghh) to Satanism. [heh :) ]
and last but not least..
m is for moron. figure that one out..they oughta ban numbskulls like you from letting you speak your opinion. The next time you’ve got somethin to say. ( well type. but now its say) raise your hand and put it over your mouth. you’re input isn’t wanted and you can’t claim to be a real ‘american’ due to the fact that you don’t accept a vast majority of america’s social class. ignorant.
m is for moron.
There’s one every day.
They won’t read the comments.
They’re too far away.
They can’t tell sarcasm
From a punch in the face
But with their fine wisdom
They show us our place
M is for moron
A fine one indeed
Is this Ashley Bryan
Who seems not to read
Look out, Randy Newman. Stand back, Mose Allison. Jake Squid is on the move. :D
I find Ashley’s statements clear, compelling and persuasive.
Unfortunately, I am unable to determine what exactly I am being persuaded of, and thus, I return to my original thoughts. Whatever those may have been.
Something to do with your Fresca habit and your looming job interview ?
No, wait. Those are my thoughts. Never mind.
this is a hilarious and well-thought-out sarcastic response to a serious issue. a welcome break in all the boring research.
:D
I’m a straight woman and have more than one gay friend. I can tell you that none of them are nearly as concerned about obtaining marrying rights in order to raise kids as they are about the LEGAL RIGHTS that come with marriage in the way our society is currently set up. The issue at hand are the LEGAL RIGHTS first and foremost. And it’s unfair not to give gay couples these right when straight couples have them. I’m talking about such things as hospital visits, health decision, tax benefits, health insurance, inheritance, etc etc. THAT’s what they would like to have. Most of them won’t even care if you name this union “marriage”. If it bothers someone that much to use that term, use something else. Who cares? As long as they are given the same rights for being in a committed relationship as the straight couples since they are sharing their income, their lives, etc they would be happy.
Can I get an AMEN to that! oh and HELLLLLLLL YEAH!
Wait, you’re saying that if a couple uses birth control, the marriage should be annulled??
lol
should we make marriage of post menopausal women illegal too?