Next Tuesday Maine’s voters will decide whether to keep or reject a same-sex marriage law that already has passed the Legislature and been signed by the Governor. The law is suspended until the people vote.

The question will appear on the ballot as Proposition 1, which asks, “Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?” A “yes” vote is a vote to reject the new law, and keep Maine’s current law; a “no” vote is a vote for same-sex marriage.

Redefining marriage is the big news for Proposition 1, but there are important related issues. For example, if Proposition 1 fails and the new law is put into effect, first cousins of the same sex will be allowed to marry. Not, however, until they have certified that they have had genetic counseling from a physician.

This requirement is sensible if the cousins are of different sexes (and the law does require the certification for opposite-sex couples), but for same-sex couples the requirement is silly and irrelevant – except to the extent that it reminds us that up till now every couple that has married in Maine has had the capacity to reproduce. Yes, there are exceptions, but the generalization is entirely reasonable and true. On the other hand, if Proposition 1 fails, marriage will be expanded to couples that are never fertile.

Sexually integrated couples can, and do, create babies. Sexually segregated couples can’t and don’t.

Of course, some same-sex couples are raising children. Some of those kids are adopted and some are the biological children of one of the partners. However, no matter how good a job the adults are doing, the children do not have the advantage of being biologically tied to both adults or of having both a mother and a father in the home.

On a related matter, no marriage license may be issued in the State of Maine until both parties have been given a “brochure prepared by the Department of Behavioral and Development Services concerning the effects of alcohol and drugs on fetuses.” One supposes that this requirement was put into law because of the generalized suspicion that couples consisting of men and women might be producing “fetuses.” No same-sex couple is going to produce their own babies, but they will get the brochure.

If Proposition 1 fails and the new law goes into effect, the words “bride,” “groom,” “husband,” “wife,” “widow,” and “widower” must be construed “to be gender neutral for all purposes throughout the law.” This says more than that two women or two men can marry; it says that when the law speaks of a “bride” or a “wife” or a “widow” that no conclusion can be made about the sex of the person being referred to. The language of the new law makes clear thinking impossible. A statement like, “Wives and children first” becomes gibberish; it is no more helpful that saying “Everybody wait until the adults and children have been accommodated.”

It is said that the new law will protect religious freedom. This claim is incorrect and misleading, and seemingly intentionally so. What the new law does say is that nothing in the bill diminishes the constitutional rights of a religious institution. Since the legislature has no power to diminish constitutional rights, the legislature should not get any credit for tacking this truism onto the new law. The sentence on religious liberty is useless; if it were suddenly to disappear, the meaning and effect of the law would be entirely unchanged. No religious institution or person should take any comfort from that sentence. The sentence was added to the new law to deflect criticism – and it might be working – but the sentence is meaningless.

If Proposition 1 fails and the new law goes into effect, the following text (and more just like it) will be deleted from Maine’s code of laws: “The union of one man and one woman joined in traditional monogamous marriage is of inestimable value to society,” and the State of Maine “has a compelling interest to nurture and promote [this] unique institution . . . in the support of harmonious families and the physical and mental health of children.” This language was put into Maine’s code of laws just a dozen years ago.

If the people of Maine no longer believe the statement just quoted, then by all means they should eliminate it. Is it possible, though, that Mainers don’t believe that man-woman marriage is of “inestimable value” to society, and to children in particular?

A sex-integrated man-woman marriage is not the same as a sex-segregated same-sex marriage. That is why (to take just one example) genetic counseling makes sense when a male marries his female cousin but not when he “marries” his male cousin. That distinction is not bigotry, but biology, and it is the foundation of family life.

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Mr. Oliphant, a lawyer, is a Research Fellow at the Marriage Law Project, Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America.