Bull hocky! State sanctioned marriages have never been about “procreation.” From the very beginning of organized state governments, marriages, in fact civil contracts, have be solely concerned with the control of wealth. Examine history and you will find that civil unions were a way to amagamate families, determine land and personal property owner ship, inheritance, legitimate birthrights (whose kids belong to whom and who are the bastards we can sell into slavery), and, of course, taxation. Married couples got tax breaks because they had the potential of encreasing the future tax base expotentially on the number of children they produced; single folks were socked with higher rates as a penalty for being amiss in their duty to the state and they had, suppossidly, a greater disposable income that could be tapped without a great deal of protest. Seems that the state figured out fromt he very beginning that if the kids don’t get it, the state will — and still does today. I can understand why the legislatures resist granting marriage to gays and lesbians. It would reduce the tax income while encreasing the costs social benefits. No doubt, they are more than happy to let the Churches do their dirty anti-gay work for them.

The church’s main concern for marriage and subsequent procreation, however, is,and has always been, their interests in increasing the membership in order to exact tithes and collect pentance, in gold Thank You, from as many “registered” members as possible. Marriage has been the church’s greates power to contol the behavior and allegiance of their members. For example, if you examine Cathlic history, the only reason priest are forbidden to marry was because of a civil case in which the accumulated wealth of a deceased married bishop was given to his widow and children rather than forfited back into the Church’s coffers. Pissed the Pope and his hench-cardinals off, so they passed a new canon requiring priest to “give their virginity and sexuality to Jesus.” (Nuns as old maids are completly different story.) A kind of play but don’t pay sort arrangement guarenteed to hold the Church harmless in case horny young priests, brothers and monks decided to set up clandestine households with comely local wenches. Evidently, sins can be forgiven; civil verdics are final. Doesn’t it seem ironic that organized relegion, being as fanatically concentrated on accumulating tax-free wealth as they are, wouldn’t encourage gay/single folks to come join the fold and thereby contribute their share to the financial ledger. But, no one ever explained to my satisfaction the rational thinking of American Christians when it comes to rational thinking. Logic compared to blind faith is evidently an evil process.

As a final thought, is seems that hackned cliches, such as the one noted above, as become as sacred to anti-gay fanatics as biblical scripture. Its repeated so often that one might believe it was spoke from God’s lips to the ears of our social foes. But, it only man’s words repeated adnausium. Cute-sy but hollow of meaningfull value.

If anyone’s interested, here’s contact information for the Sioux City (“Siouxland”) Chamber of Commerce: http://www.siouxlandchamber.com/contactus.html; and for the Sioux City Tourism Bureau: http://www.siouxcitytourism.com/contactus.htm. Remember, be nice to *those* people — they aren’t the two buttheads on the city council. However those two buttheads on the city council could severely affect Sioux City’s economy and reputation. I know that if that city council resolution passed, there’s no way I’d set foot in Sioux City or give them a penny of any financial support whatsoever.