You can never legislate morality or peoples behavior. If that were possible, we wouldn't have all the alcoholism, drug abuse, children born out of wedlock, and crime. Society has to hold people accountable and stop making excuses for them. I am a firm believer in neutering irresponsible human beings that continually litter. Sheesh one woman here has over 20 children.
Sadly, the statement I bolded is just not true. While I agree that you can't legislate "morality", you can legislate people's behavior. We passed enough laws that it's now illegal to discriminate against blacks, at least institutionally. I don't hold out much hope for human beings to actually treat each other as equals, but as long as they're forced to coexist on the workforce,
eventually the experience of knowing some black people will cause
some people to rethink their previously held views.
The same will be true of gays. Until people get to interact with some people that they know to be gay, they will continue to think of this as "not my problem" and feel that our current institutionalised discrimination is acceptable. It isn't, it never is. Nor is dicrimination against any other race, women, religion or lack thereof, handicap, or whatever group you care to insert.
As for having billions of kids, that one is tough to legislate. Conception is a biological function of hetersexual sex. As long as our society takes no responsibility for educating our youth on ways to avoid pregnancy (because of course as religious people, "just say no" is all the advice anyone should ever need) we condemn ourselves to always having a class of self-selected societal untouchables, which is a horrible situation. People in abject poverty are always the ones who produce the most children- this has always been the case. Without a way out of poverty, these children grow up facing less that average opportunities and are forced to make decisions that the majority of us will never understand. To say this is sad doesn't even scratch the surface.
My inclination is to stop rewarding people for having more kids, and offer food stamps and assistance to the
working poor. This is not how it works though. There is no way for those in true poverty to work their way out, because unless they are in a position to land a good paying job (which most are not or they wouldn't be poor to begin with), the kinds of jobs they can get don't pay enough for them to survive without some degree of assistance. I would like people to get the true hand up that's needed to complete job training, and continue to receive the benefits they need until they actually ARE able to make it on their own. The likelihood that someone who had gone through such a life-changing ordeal would raise children who value education and honest work is far stronger than those who are raised on the system and see no way out.
But what about the lazy fuckers who have no desire to work, but keep having kids anyway? Cutting off funding penalises the children, and I can't see that as wholesome or fair. I'll admit I don't have the answer.
What I do know is that gay couples marrying certainly would not be adding to the unwanted child crisis, and many of them are willing to adopt other people's uinwanted children. If people are willing to provide a stable environment for kids, and they actually want them (which they'd have to really want them- they sure aren't going to be happening by accident), that just seems like a good solution to two problems.
