The radio ad for Sean Hannity's program runs incessantly, featuring him saying, "Society doesn't need to put its seal of approval on the choices people make."
This in reference to same sex marriage.
He obviously doesn't appreciate how the government already puts its seal of approval on people's choices, and has done so for a very long time.
The most obvious social example is marriage itself, which receives a healthy tax preference in the form of the tax code's filing status "married filing jointly" . . . since the end of the Second World War! This isn't just a seal of approval. It's actually a financial encouragement to marry.
Or consider the child tax credit, which you aren't going to get without having children. With it, the government encourages the having of children.
Or the earned income credit, which you don't get unless you have some earned income. It's government's way of encouraging people who don't work at all to get a job and get work experience, on the assumption that they will move up the ladder eventually to positions which pay too much to receive the credit.
All of these things the government encourages to promote social stability in the form of nuclear families, home ownership, work, and population growth, all of which are essential to . . . tax revenue.
Giving same sex partners the same rewards as heterosexual unions ignores the fact that the former are naturally incapable of growing the population. Government has no interest in promoting the ineffectual.
"Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto."
-- John Locke
