Initiative filed to demand that newly married people have a baby within three years. But hey, no pressure.

An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled.

Initiative 957 was filed last month by Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state supreme court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage.

Under the measure, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.

All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.


According to the group's Web site, organizers hope that the supreme court will strike down the initiatives as unconstitutional, weakening the basis for the same-sex marriage ban.

"And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric," it says.

I understand the sentiment that drives this initiative though I have to say that it just seems very heavy handed and a little mean-spirited. I would think that instead the homosexual community would be better served by portraying themselves as less militant and more cuddly and non-threatening. It really is the fear that gay people are trying to push their sexual proclivities onto other people that drives the prejudice against them.

Besides getting married isn't always about making babies. Sometimes it is just a signal that you have had all of the fun that you expect out of life and now it is time to pay some penance.

Or is that just in my case?