Today's Marriage Neutering Material in the Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is chock full of marriage neutering stuff again. Mark Z. Barabak and Jessica Garrison report on what I mentioned earlier – President Obama's move to extend benefits to "partners" of federal employees.

It was not immediately clear whether Obama's latest decision would mollify his critics.

No, it won't. Marriage neutering advocates would not stop complaining even if neutered marriage became the law of the land written experessly in the Constitution, because someone is always going to realize, despite any changes to law, policy, school curriculum, etc. that there is a difference between the pairing of a man and a woman and the pairing of two men and the pairing of two women. As long as someone notes the difference, the advocates will be complaining about it.

[The rest is below the fold; make the jump if you want to read it.]

Marriage provides a clear delineation. Employers, especially the government, have some incentive to extend benefits to spouses - in no small part because normal marital behavior naturally creates children. When non-marriage is incentivised as though it is marriage, the results can discourage marriage. On what basis are these benefits to be extended to non-spouses? Will a sexual orientation test be included? I am open to an argument for the value to society for extending (some) benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, but I am reluctant to officially encourage and sanction what I am convinced is harmful behavior. However, there must be some way of distinguishing between a committed couple and a casual one.

A "fact sheet" is offered here.

In an Oval Office event later today, President Barack Obama will sign a Presidential Memorandum on Federal Benefits and Non-Discrimination.

Interesting title, yet there will be plenty of discrimination. Trios and other group arrangements will be discriminated against. Roommates, related or not, will be discriminated against. Why shouldn't a "single" person not be able to designate a partner – such as friend who could use the benefits?

For civil service employees, domestic partners of federal employees can be added to the long-term care insurance program; supervisors can also be required to allow employees to use their sick leave to take care of domestic partners and non-biological, non-adopted children. For foreign service employees, a number of benefits were identified, including the use of medical facilities at posts abroad, medical evacuation from posts abroad, and inclusion in family size for housing allocations.

The editorial board complains that Obama hasn't done enough to "advance gay rights" – which they don't define. After all, getting a marriage license without a bride or a groom isn't some right that heterosexual people have that homosexual people don't. The piece calls the DOMA "odious". Imagine - a law that states the obvious, that marriage is between a man and a woman - is "odious". Perhaps the editorial board believes that if they say that enough, people will believe it?

On the paper's blog, Maura Dolan reports that California Governor Scwharzenegger told a federal court that "the state" does not dispute that the California Marriage Amendment (which the voters of the state approved) "may" violate the federal Constitution. This, of course, means that Schwarzenegger wasn't saying that the CMA does violate the Constitution, nor did he implore the court to toss it or suspend it pending the outcome of the case.

Finally, the paper runs a fluff piece by Gary Friedman marking the anniversary of the temporary period of neutered marriage licensing in California, brought about by the California Supreme Court's refusal to stay their marriage-neutering decision to wait for the CMA to be voted up or down later in 2008.

The article struggles to convince the reader that Paul Waters and Kevin Voecks have the "normality of marriage", despite the fact that there is no bride involved in their court-imposed voter-denied neutered license "marriage". I don't know them - they may have a great relationship and be really great people. But what they are experiencing is not marriage in any sense except for certain legal aspects.

As you can see, the paper continues to focus on this issue disproportionate to the rest of the news, and it does so with a bias towards neutering marriage.