Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth

for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. Back in 2013, Amy Davidson Sorkin covered for the New Yorker

the Supreme Court hearings over California's Proposition 8. Now, as shocking, as it sounds today,

there was this brief moment in California history when voters there had

amended the state constitution to legally define marriage as only the union between a man and a woman.

In one of her articles, Sorkin described how Charles Cooper, a lawyer on behalf of Prop 8, had argued

that the government had a duty to protect marriage because it had a duty to protect children. Sorkin found this argument,

as she put it, baffling. She argued, in fact, that if the state really wanted to protect children,

it should affirm same-sex marriage. After all, don't some gay and lesbian people have children

before they enter a same-sex arrangement? And most importantly, she added, the state had many other

compelling reasons to affirm so-called same-sex marriage, reasons that had, as she put it, nothing at all to do with children.

Well, today, 11 years later, there's another lawsuit before the courts.

This one brought by a gay couple who alleges that, quote, New York's definition of infertility discriminates against same-sex couples.

According to a description

in an article for The Guardian, one of the men previously worked for New York City, whose health

insurance plan included coverage for in vitro fertilization for heterosexual relationships. In their

lawsuits, the men employ a new definition of infertility that was issued in October 2023 by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.

It defines infertility as, and I quote, a disease condition or status that necessitates medical intervention, including donor gametes.

Based on this definition, they argue, same-sex couples should also be considered infertile and therefore should be

eligible for the same coverage. As one of the men explained to reporters back in 2022, and I quote,

we got married and then we wanted all the trappings, House Children 401k, end quote. Well, inherent in both this

statement and in the lawsuit and in so much

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