In a brief filed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, Texas attorney general Greg Abbott says that the state’s gay marriage ban may help to reduce out-of-wedlock births:

Texas’s marriage laws are rationally related to the State’s interest in reducing unplanned out-of-wedlock births. By channeling procreative heterosexual intercourse into marriage, Texas’s marriage laws reduce unplanned out-of-wedlock births and the costs that those births impose on society. Recognizing same-sex marriage does not advance this interest because same-sex unions do not result in pregnancy.

As I’ve written before, this is a remarkably confused argument. There are costs to out-of-wedlock births. Too many children grow up without two parents and are less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to find stable jobs, and more likely to engage in crime and welfare dependency. All real problems. Which have nothing to do with bans on same-sex marriage. One thing gay couples are not doing is filling the world with fatherless children. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that allowing more people to make the emotional and financial commitments of marriage could cause family breakdown or welfare spending.

The brief repeatedly says that “same-sex marriage fails to advance the State’s interest in reducing unplanned out-of-wedlock births.” Well, that may be true. But lots of state policies fail to advance that particular interest, from hunting licenses to corporate welfare. Presumably Abbott doesn’t oppose them because they don’t serve that particular purpose.

The brief does note that same-sex marriage may very well produce other societal benefits, such as increasing household wealth or providing a stable environment for children raised by same-sex couples [or] increasing adoptions.” But the attorney general wants to hang the state’s ten-gallon hat on the point that it won’t reduce out-of-wedlock births by opposite-sex couples.

In a previous case, Judge Richard Posner declared that the states of Indiana and Wisconsin had not produced any rational basis for banning gay marriage. Attorney General Abbott seems determined to prove him right.