Florida Attorney General: Same-sex marriage would cause ‘significant public harm’
Florida’s Attorney General is claiming that recognising same-sex marriage would cause significant harm to the public, in her legal briefs defending a marriage ban.
Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in the court filings: “The Court should also deny the preliminary injunction motions because (…) disrupting Florida’s existing marriage laws would impose significant public harm.”
“Florida’s marriage laws have a close, direct, and rational relationship to society’s legitimate interest in increasing the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by the mothers and fathers who produced them in stable and enduring family units.”
She added that recognising same-sex marriage would cause “significant financial and logistical problems” for state pension and insurance programs, despite the conspicuous lack of problems in any of the 19 states which already recognise same-sex marriage.
Attorney Daniel Tilley, representing the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement: “Florida’s discriminatory laws cause serious harm to real families across the state.
“Despite the state’s assertion that the harms to same-sex married couples aren’t significant enough to warrant relief, the families living every day being treated like legal strangers by their home state know better.”
Despite Bondi’s claims that the logisitics of same-sex marriage would harm the state, studies have shown that recognising same-sex marriage brings money into a state.
