Knowing that I’d have a two hour wait in the airport lounge, followed by a three hour flight, I grabbed a book from my "to read" stack and headed off to Detroit. It was The Handmaid’s Tale, a 1998 novel by Margaret Atwood. It fully occupied my time and my interest and, as The Washington Post noted, it’s "A novel that brilliantly illuminates some of the darker interconnections between politics and sex." It’s also a novel that I found deeply troubling in the political climate of 2006, eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984, and directly related to the current legislative and court struggles over same-sex marriage.

In the novel, the protagonist, Offered, is classified as a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead because she has viable ovaries. In an age of declining birth rates, the lives of women in the Republic were totally controlled by the proscriptions of the Republic of Gilead and women were considered vessels for fetal gestation and childbirth. Offered, once a month was forced to lie flat on her back and pray that the Commander would make her pregnant. Gilead represents the ultimate in 1984 style state reproductive control.

Since, at least in theory, gays and lesbians don’t reproduce; they should be immune to the fantasies of state control of reproduction detailed in The Handmaid’s Tale. But increasingly reproductive issues are a factor in same sex marriage legal opinions. The State Supreme Court of New York and of Washington lean heavily on reproduction as a reason to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

In an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, Kenji Yoshino, a Yale Law School professor writes, "What’s noteworthy about the New York decision, however, is that it became the second ruling by a state high court to assert a startling rationale for prohibiting same-sex marriage—that straight couples may be less stable parents than their gay counterparts and consequently require the benefits of marriage to assist them."

The rationale for this twisted logic is drawn from the theory of "reckless procreation," which essentially says that heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children, sometimes as a result of accident or impulse. Gays and lesbians, on the other hand, have children intentionally, not by accident or impulse. The fact that gays and lesbians have children as a result of artificial insemination, adoption or surrogate pregnancies—all planned and intentional—rather than by accident or impulse, in the eyes of the New York Court, means that gays and lesbians don’t need marriage to help raise and protect children, only straights do.

I must confess that I had to read the Yoshino article several times to begin to grasp the twisted logic of the disingenuous opinion rendered in New York. The Indiana court has similarly used this apparently heterophobic logic to buffer their ban on same-sex marriage. Essentially what’s being said is that if straights screw around and an unplanned pregnancy is the result, the institution of marriage will help provide a better environment for raising the child. If gays screw around, there’s no risk of pregnancy, only of HIV or other sexually transmitted disease, so there’s no reason for allowing same-sex marriage. If gays and lesbians have kids, it’s because they want them and plan for them, therefore, they don’t need, or merit, the benefits of marriage. Only straights, acting on impulse and the victim of an accidental pregnancy, deserve the benefits of marriage.

To her credit, chief judge, Judith Kaye, in her dissent to the 4-to-2 decision wrote, "…even if marriage were a response to the dangers of ‘reckless procreation,’ excluding gay couples from marriage in no way advances the goal of responsible heterosexual child-rearing…. There are enough marriage licenses to go around for everyone."

Justice Barbara Madsen of the Washington Supreme Court wrote in the controlling opinion of a 5-4 decision that the gay-marriage ban in that state, "…is constitutional because the Legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival."

If the state of Washington, by Supreme Court opinion, is now embarking on a policy dictated by legislative belief as to what furthers procreation, God help us all. We’re closer to The Handmaid’s Tale and to 1984 than any of us, gay or straight, want to acknowledge.

There seems to be little interest in advancing responsible heterosexual child-rearing or in advancing stronger heterosexual marriages that won’t require Congressional defense. What’s wanted is the preservation of bigotry. The champions of the American Taliban, masquerading as Focus on the Family, or the Faith and Freedom Network and similar organizations, will use any and all means to protect the status-quo or better still, to return to the days before Stonewall when their belief in Ozzie and Harriet sustained them.

Let’s hear it for "accidental procreation" and the New York Supreme Court and for furthering procreation ala the Washington Supreme Court. It’s the biggest crock of distorted legal logic, and you know what else, that I’ve seen in a long time. It smells!