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A Pointed 104 Seconds on the Marriage Debate
Here at Stanford this past spring, the Anscombe Society braved threats and intimidation of all kinds to host a conference in favor of traditional marriage. In this video one of the speakers, the marvelously articulate and completely fearless Ryan Anderson, replies to a questioner. Watch the video, if you have 104 seconds to spare, and then note, if you would, my questions below:
Without quite realizing it, I saw when I listened to this exchange, I’d been sliding toward at least a grudging acceptance of the libertarian position on marriage—namely, that we should get the government out of the business of defining marriage altogether. Which leads to:
1) Anderson is right, isn’t he, that such an approach leads inevitably to viewing marriage as merely a subset of contract law? If a man wants to marry a man, fine; let them draw up a legally binding contract. If one man wants to marry six women; or two men, two women; or one woman another—again, fine. Let them simply draw up the proper contracts, and let the government enforce them as it would any contract.
2) This really won’t do, will it? Marriage between one man and one woman really is different, and the state needs to recognize that reality, or—what? Or chaos. Yes?
Published in General
As I’ve said before, bring on Gay Marriage. Let the Bureau of Licenses give out Certificates of Gay Marriage. Let Hallmark sell “Happy Gay Marriage Anniversary” cards.
So, in addition to binding the spouses like a contract, it also gives the married couple juridical personhood, similar to what corporations and registered associations enjoy? That’s the first plausible answer I’ve heard recently. Thanks.
So… for an LLC, you choose a name, file your articles of organization, obtain any required licenses and permits, and perhaps create an operating agreement. Many of those licenses and permits may be rather useless, so licensing perhaps shouldn’t be a vital step in the LLC process.
How far do we extend this analogy to marriage? Are marriages like corporations? Perhaps. Mr Rattler calls us a corporation, and it doesn’t bug me.
So in your view, if a state decided that children should belong to whole communities, would that be OK? If not, why not? What is the principle you would employ to stop this from happening?
From a practical standpoint, I think it boils down to a few simple things:
1. Do we need the legal doctrine known as the “marital presumption of paternity”? In other words, do we need fathers to be legally attached to their families? Or a little more broadly: do we need the legal recognition of fathers (defined as the male who gave rise to a specific child)?
2. Do we need to enforce a nature-based limitation on the number of parents that are legally recognized for children? Do we need a default setting for this that applies to all (ie, “two”)? Shall we open up the idea that handling it on a case by case basis is beneficial or just?