  The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made several findings recently. The first one is that same sex couples are required by the equal protection clause of the Massachusetts constitution to have the right to marriage. The second one is that separate is seldom, if ever, equal. There is a move among a few to amend the constitution to include the following: Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.
" "Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups. " This is straightforward. Marriage is defined as between a man and women, but what are the legal incidents thereof? The federal government has determined that there are more than 1000 rights that come with the marriage certificate.
The question now becomes which of these rights are exclusively rights of marriage and which ones could be considered a contract between two people? The constitution contains what is called the equal protection clause. This protects all citizens of the United States and has been used to reduce racial discrimination, sexual discrimination and even marital status discrimination.
Years ago, women could be discriminated against because they were in their child bearing years. Married men would be promoted over un-married men, because they had a wife to support. The equal protection clause has put everyone on an equal playing field. The marriage of a man and women is a difficult union to describe. When most people choose a spouse, they are planning on spending the rest of their life with that person. They come together because of emotional and sexual attraction to each other. The Arizona court system has said that marriage is for child bearing and rearing.
Does this mean that barren women can not get married? How about infertile men? Children are a by-product of marriage -- they are not the purpose of marriage. Same sex couples come together for the same reasons, and this leads to my point -- the equal protection clause of the constitution will need to protect same sex couples in the same way as opposite sex couples. When there is a conflict in the constitution, the courts are left to determine the balance. One amendment in the constitution would say that two people of the same sex can not be married, and that the rights are not available to them.
The other clause says that all citizens need equal protection. In order to grant benefits to the same sex couples as required by the equal protection clause, the “legal incidents” would start to be removed from marriage. This will slowly reduce marriage to being a shell of an institution that it is today. If the amendment does not pass and same sex couples are allowed to marry into the same institution as opposite sex couples now do, what is going to be the outcome?
There are going to be divorces, but more people will be marrying and living together. The institution of marriage survives with all of the current rights and benefits, along with new ones. This leaves the major question – what will defining marriage between a man and women do? Will it destroy marriage or will it defend it? 
