Justice Peter T. Zarella of the Connecticut Supreme Court
cited the scholarship of Penn Law Professor Amy Wax
in his opinion dissenting from today's 4-3 ruling striking down a law barring
same-sex marriage.
"In my view, the state's interests in promoting and
regulating procreative conduct are legitimate. Indeed, they are
compelling," he wrote. "I further believe that limiting marriage to
one man and one woman is rationally related to the advancement of those
interests."
Quoting Wax's 2005 paper published in the San Diego Law
Review, titled "The Conservative's Dilemma: Traditional Institutions,
Social Change, and Same-Sex Marriage,'' Zarella wrote that "the state
rationally could conclude that '[t]he power of biological ties means that
heterosexual families are most likely to achieve stability and successfully
perform the childrearing function.'"
