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When U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled last week that California’s Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, it renewed the arguments and emotions that exposed a divided nation and left politicians running as fast as they can for cover. The proponents of Proposition 8 state that marriage should be between a man and woman and heterosexual marriage is based on the “traditions” that made the United States a great nation. The opponents of Proposition 8 claim that in a society that cherishes freedom and equality, marriage should be open to all Americans. And, just like other morality arguments of our time, the country is split into two intransigent camps.

The concept of traditional marriage has left many pundits divulging the reality that marriage was not always a monogamous male female relationship. While this may be true, the proponents of Proposition 8 are not yearning for the time when those traditions were evident, rather they are pining for a time such as the 1950s when America was at its peak and the nuclear family was a symbol of the nation’s greatness. The relationship between a stable home environment and a productive economy does have some credence though. When a society is perpetually focused on mating, it may not be centered on more productive and beneficial endeavors. However, wouldn’t our society be more productive if all of our citizens were in a stable sexual relationship?

The other argument for Proposition 8 is biblical. Many proponents of the law state that the Bible and especially the book of Leviticus, determine that homosexuality is a sin. While, it is true that the book of Leviticus states that man should not lie with man, the crux of the book is more about the rules of animal husbandry, human diet and personal hygiene rather than a condemnation of homosexuality. Two of my favorite versus of Leviticus is 7:26 and 7:27 which states, “And you must not eat any blood of the birds or the domesticated land animals in any of the places where you live. Any person who eats any blood – that person will be cut off from his people.” Gee, that takes the fun out of Thanksgiving down on the family farm and it also demonstrates the fallacy of the morality argument against homosexual marriage. Since religious fundamentalism does not allow you to pick and choose the abiding morality, you cannot preach one morality and ignore the others.

While the traditions and biblical arguments are weak for the passage of Proposition 8, the greatest argument against it, other than it violates the U.S. Constitution, resides in the reality of the earth in 2010. Societies on earth are experiencing great problems such as war, oil dependency, terrorism, climate change and deadly viruses. All of these problems relate directly to an overpopulated earth. In 1950 there were two and half billion humans inhabiting the earth. In 2010, there are almost seven billion humans suffocating the planet. In less than sixty years, the human population has increased by almost three times. More humans mean more conflict, less land for living, inhabiting places humans have never ventured filled with viruses we have no cures for, and, lastly, more demand for human’s most precious resource, oil. With the root of most major problems revolving around overpopulation, our society and its leaders need to address this issue over any other. To me, in this overpopulated world, it is much more offensive to view a family of six roll out of a minivan than to see two men, who will never overpopulate the world, holding hands in the name of love.