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Limited Government, Gay Marriage & The Future
Last week I had a post about how the fight over marriage equality is over. Gay marriage has won. In the ensuing discussion, the entire point seemed to have been lost. We have passed the tipping point on this issue. Just a reminder:
Look at that trend line.
It’s not just this Gallup poll. Public sentiment, as well as legal and social momentum, is clear and in one direction. My entire point is that there’s no fight to be had here politically.
I think I’ve established here on Ricochet that elections aren’t my main focus. It doesn’t matter as much to me.
But it matters to many of you, my friends here at Ricochet. What I’m trying to tell you is that if you keep pushing on this, you’ll keep losing. Electoral politics depends, rightly or wrongly, on appealing to the public. You can’t do that by pushing on issues that the public is on the complete opposite side of. If you do, you’re going to keep losing.
The problem is that we’ve reached a point where the federal government has become dangerously out of control, and since I can’t just go off into the woods and live in a cabin with my cats, I have been drawn, with enormous disgust, into having to care about this stuff.
Let me be uncharacteristically communitarian for a moment. We — those who care about human freedom, those of us who care about the future of this nation — have to stop losing elections. At a certain point, if we continue on the course we are presently on, there will be a massive, sudden, probably violent change in our government or our way of life. Frankly, I’m tired of losing elections to dangerous statists because for some reason the better candidate gets tripped up talking about gay marriage.
Enough of this.
I thus present a solution, one I have presented before here on Ricochet.
Most of you reading this have very strong feelings about gay marriage. I’m not going to argue about your feelings, your belief structure, or what you think. We’ve been through all of that over and over. I’m not going to convince you and you’re not going to convince me.
What I is suggest a change in emphasis for conservatives who care about traditional marriage. This solution I first encountered out of the mouth of a man who I know to be, frankly, a bigot. (Not in the diluted sense of the word so frequently used today. An actual bigot.)
The solution: Separation of marriage and state.
Marriage is a lot of things, among them a legal contract. As the law stands now, one needs a license to get married. We license marriages now, but we did not always. Historically, there weren’t licenses. There were records. The clerk merely recorded what others had used their freedom to do.
The point of recording marriage is to resolve legal disputes. Marriage need not be licensed. People could simply register with a government clerk. Many of you will voice practical objections. “What about X?” There’s always a solution for X.
Separating marriage and government means that how I feel about gay people and gay marriage and how you feel about gay people and gay marriage don’t matter politically. One side isn’t forcing its definitions or values on the other. We don’t need to fight. We can both be on the same side without either of us compromising our belief systems.
It’s also not an electoral loser.
Published in General
Good idea. Repeal income tax and Social Security, which are far more statist institutions than any marriage laws. Conservatives could get behind that. It would probably strengthen marriage and the family rather than weaken it as eliminating marriage laws would. Can’t understand why libertarians hate marriage law more than Social Security. Unless Basil is on to something.
Can’t understand why libertarians hate marriage law more than Social Security.
This is news to me.
If the state exited defining/recognizing “marriage,” would it need to exit defining/recognizing parenthood? Currently, the definition of parenthood is directly linked to the definition of marriage.
And my questions remain unanswered…
How?
How does support for “traditional marriage” correlate to a desire to determine how someone lives?
Marriage is a voluntary institution. If you do not want your community involved in your relationship, do not ask it to sanction it with special legal status.
When marriage is civilly recognized as “one man, one woman, for life,” the child has only a mom and a dad. (any siblings are full blooded, as well)
When civil marriage is recognized as “one man, one woman,” the child has a mom and a dad, and no legal limit on the number of step parents. (siblings can be full blooded, half blooded, or step)
When civil marriage is recognized as “any two people,” references to gender in marriage and family law are stricken, effectively discarding the natural understanding of biological parenthood, and opening the door to three or more legal parents. The statement above regarding step parents applies here, as well.
If the state exits marriage, will it still need to have a definition of “parent”?
Precisely.
I happen to agree with Michael Bloomberg about supersize sugary drinks. They’re incredibly unhealthy and disgusting.
I have a different view of the role of government than Bloomberg, though, so I oppose any form of government attempts to stop people drinking them.
I would, however, also be inclined to oppose any government sanction or endorsement or promotion of 32-oz drinks (not that I can think immediately of anywhere that would be a good idea anyway, but pretend with me).
Stop treating all conservatives as Michael Bloomberg because we are deeply uncomfortable with the government endorsing something.
Side note: Sorry, but that’s just a bunch of b.s. and bologna. The right doesn’t want to determine how people live. We just don’t accept that all dogs are now cats even if a majority of the populace declares that to be true, nor do we care to be forced to endorse the idea that all dogs are cats.
The SSM push, whatever the intentions of the more libertarian side, is not resulting in letting people live however they want. It’s resulting in the courts (granted, with some poll support at least at the moment) making a decision: yes, marriage has always been this way. But now it is going to be another way, and we’re going to make that change so completely that if you don’t go along you are on the wrong side of the law. And we’re going to do all that in a very few years.
The rapidity of that change and the consequences for those who don’t agree (or don’t change fast enough) is deeply disturbing to conservatives, apart from the issue itself. I don’t understand how libertarians can be so elated over winning government recognition of something, and so comparatively unconcerned by the implications for religious freedom and, by extension, to every other type of liberty. If the court can compel you to do something you believe is wrong, what can it not do?
Haven’t read the whole thread, but trust me, the left does NOT want separation of marriage and state. The entire gay marriage movement is a blatant attempt to use the government to force their views on their political opponents.
I’m all for separation of marriage and state, but only if you eliminate the welfare state along with it that has been subsidizing broken families and (relatively) punishing intact families for decades.
I don’t get it. Who’s pushing?
We’re the ones getting pushed. Hammered. Bull-dozed. SSM advocates are pushing this down everyone’s throat, and demanding complete and utter obedience to their thought police, and your plea is to go along and be quiet?
I think “pushed” has been redefined to mean “refuses to surrender.”
Thank you for the well wishes.
Who needs informed consent? Just change any laws so it is not needed if it is a problem. Informed consent is just a law written by men and thus can be changed or ignored as we wish. Anyway marriage should be an institution open to all life forms and combination of life forms.
My birds already love us and we them, I just want to formalize the relationships so everybody has to respect our choices.
Well, as you say there are multiple issues here that have been conflated:
My experience has been that many libertarians support the first of these, far fewer support the second, and none support the third. Unfortunately, libertarians a very small force in SSM-advocacy and their objections are drowned out by the Leftist majorities who have no problem with #2 and would love to see #3 implemented.
As I said before, I’m both surprised and upset by the way this has gone down; I never imagined SSM would be imposed like this; I thought the 19th amendment would be the model.
Mea culpa.
Though I agree broadly with Fred that SoCons would do well to use their efforts elsewhere –there are much bigger problems facing marriage than the fact that gays want to do it as well — I can’t help but second this.
The definition of parent is directly related to the definition of marriage. I’m still awaiting an answer to my question.
He’s not here to answer questions. He’s here to poke the bear with a stick.
This seems to me to be very non libertarian. Government didn’t invent marrige nor did it define what marriage is. The government’s involvment in marriage is to try to encourage and organize it within society. Shouldn’t the libertarian position to be that government shouldn’t be involve in marriage at all, and not what you said above?
Can you explain how civil marriage can exist absent government involvement? What substitute exists for the government as a representative of the civil community?
It’s also important to understand what SoCons can do about SSM, if we were in a politically dominant position, and could push on anything (we can’t, but if we could).
The big difference between SoCons and other conservatives is that, for the most part, our concerns are focused on the Supreme Court. Even if SoCons captured a legislature and passed a law that outlawed SSM, the Supreme Court would strike that down. So it makes little sense to capture anything else but the Supreme Court.
But even if we could stuff the Court with rabid traditionalists, it would be unjust to impose social policies down the country’s throat via judicial fiat. After all, that’s what we object to being done to us.
What we want is for the Court to stop blocking legitimate battles over social issues and imposing it from the bench. They’re rigging the game. They’ve been using the notion of privacy (or substantive due process, or other principles, etc.) to prevent any traditional arguments from even being made. That’s what we want to stop.
And, by cloaking these rigged decisions as “justice,” the public thinks these are moral final judgments.
My wife is a trusts and estates attorney, and as such, deals with elder law, and the intersection of the state, marriage/co-habitation, children and property. Early on in the push for gay marriage she made the observation that an emotional reason being used for it — gays supposedly not being allowed to visit their partners in hospital because they were not “family” — was a red herring. If true, it was something easily overcome by a simple medical power of attorney.
More recently, she has also observed that since our state recognized gay marriage the tendrils of the state/courts throughout the marriage/children/property equation are greater and not likely to be untangled soon. Gay Marriage has involved the state even more in the “marriage contract”, and given the nature of its promoters that pressure will grow not lessen.
I take a live an let live attitude. While I will not accept gay marriage as a real marriage, it’s not a big issue to me, unless it impinges on others. What you do is your business, but don’t force it on me and make it my business. If you do, I am opposed to you. If you’re happy, great, don’t force me join in.
Lastly, to all those running victory laps for gay marriage I would caution you to not be too ungracious:
– 20 years ago, no one would have thought this was very likely. Gay marriage was a political loser. A lot can change in a short period of time.
– The graphs are probably accurate, but don’t reflect intensity. Many may voice support because it’s PC.
– the people having children are not disposed toward gay marriage. In a couple of generations the youth population will largely have been raised by social conservatives, because they are the ones breeding in large numbers. Furthermore, these parents have learned to avoid — or at least counter — the propagandistic effects of the school system.
– historically, the mainstreaming of homosexuality tends to reach a pinnacle at the late maturity of a civilization, slowly falling off as things decline. There’s no reason to think the West is going to do things any differently than prior civilizations.
– other rising civlizations — China, India — don’t have any special tolerance for homosexuality, nor show any likelihood of gaining one anytime soon.
Rob Long has said, frequently, that SoCons ought to look at the actual results of trying to elect presidents who will re-make the Supreme Court. It hasn’t happened. First, the GOP has rarely been in the position of sending a SC nominee to a GOP-led Senate; and the Democrats have blocked anyone who doesn’t allow liberals to rig the game. Second, the GOP has nominated David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, who (frequently enough) might as well have been nominated by Obama or Jimmy Carter. Third, the GOP never turns around and blocks an ideologue from the other side. When Orrin Hatch preaches that the Democrat president ought to get the nominees he wants, fine, but when the Democrats don’t reciprocate, you can’t just keep getting screwed on the deal.
I think Rob is right, but the solution isn’t to give up electing presidents who will nominate originalists. Instead, it’s to elect Senators with a spine. It’s a two-stage task. We need a president to nominate non-ideologues, and a Senate that won’t cave.
Say what you want about Ted Cruz, but I doubt he’ll cave.
continued from above.
In the spirit of your post of what to do with this issue for the Right, I say ignore it. Refuse to take the bait. Just say we are for individual liberty and freedom of conscience. We will protect the rights of all to live and worship as they see fit, so long as they do so non-violently. A strength of our heterogenous culture is that it has many different types living and working together, practicing tolerance on a daily basis. Taking the best that everyone has to offer and making something better, more than the sum of its parts.
Period.
Full stop. (to quote a certain politician) ;-)
And it’s at this point, IMO, where the “get the government out of marriage” (GGOM for short) faction should perform a pragmatism check. Their marriage equality allies don’t desire that separation, they don’t agree that marriage is without public purpose. So what purpose do they envision? Well, that’s never made clear, but I’d bet that their vision might not be as amenable to liberty as the traditional vision. I’d bet that their vision doesn’t exactly respect the mediating factors of biological parents both being responsible for their offspring and having authority to make decisions regarding the upbringing and formation.
Which “wrong” is less wrong? The traditional version or the coming version that has liberty reduced and government more intrusive?
The main response I’ve encountered to your question is that while they oppose government involvement the government is already actually involved. Since it is actually involved then everyone should be eligible with few exceptions. Why the gender distinction (as opposed to the age distinction) doesn’t qualify as an exception gets more complicated and divergent.
It’s not a particularly libertarian argument (for the reasons you describe), though it is something many libertarians endorse.
To be honest, my reasoning has much more to do with my being a conservative: I want to encourage gay people to live like married straights because I think it’ll be better for them and for everyone else. Easiest way to do that — I reasoned — was to treat them like married straights.
Fred’s is the more libertarianish solution.
The problem is very, very few gays seem to favor that or view marriage in that light. Some do, and some gay activists do, but their numbers seem to be miniscule. The other problem is the terrible consequences that seem to be accompanying the movement far outweigh any advantage to the social structure of our society.
Two hours later…. still waiting…