ABSTRACT
When Massachusetts officials, facing the court case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, set out to defend that state’s marriage law from a challenge by seven homosexual couples, their major line of defense was procreation. Making babies, the state argued, was the first purpose of marriage. By definition, same-sex partners could not create a child as a couple. This was important, the argument continued, because children usually do best when growing up with their two natural parents. Moreover, requiring fertility tests before marriage by opposite sex couples would be cumbersome and overly intrusive. It was better to let all otherwise qualified opposite sex couples to marry than to go down that troubling regulatory path.
