California voters will be asked to affirm gay marriage rights on the 2024 ballot followg Prop. 8 ncerns about the state nstutn.
Contents:
- A LIBERTARIAN'S VIEW OF GAY MARRIAGE
- GAY MARRIAGE AND THE LIBERTARIAN’S DILEMMA
- MANY BRONS HAVE CHANGED THEIR MDS ON GAY MARRIAGE
- SO YOU’D BE A LIBERTARIAN IF IT WEREN’T FOR ABORTN AND GAY MARRIAGE?
- THE LIBERTARIAN ARGUMENT FOR GAY MARRIAGE
- CALIFORNIA VOTERS WILL BE ASKED TO REAFFIRM GAY MARRIAGE PROTECTNS ON 2024 BALLOT
- CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR
A LIBERTARIAN'S VIEW OF GAY MARRIAGE
Six stat and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. As a libertarian, I thk all nsentg adults who want to m to a life partner ought to be treated the same air this issue on my Fox Bs show, I ved Brian Brown of the Natnal Organizatn for Marriage () and David Harsanyi, libertarian lumnist at The says gay marriage threatens marriage between a man and a woman. I don’t see a problem wh the first: If they refe marriage to clu gays, that don’t dimish my marriage.
GAY MARRIAGE AND THE LIBERTARIAN’S DILEMMA
And if kids are tght that gay marriage is OK, so what? “They’re beg told that their parents' views are sentially bigotry, ” said ’s another reason we should have school his third pot, if a state tells Catholic Chari they may not honor their beliefs and lim adoptns to straight upl, that’s a problem of Big Government, not gay marriage. “It is a mistake to allow ernment to fe what marriage should be, gay or not.
”Sorry, but I still don’t see what divorce and unwed motherhood have to do wh gay marriage. “All of that … started long before anyone brought up gay marriage, ” Harsanyi said. No prcipled libertarian objects to gay marriage for specifilly moral reasons, havg to do wh “marriage” beg rerved for the permanent bond between a man and a woman, for stance.
In what will surely be the two most closely watched s of the 2012-2013 term, the Supreme Court mt answer a qutn that no one would have dared to ask a generatn ago: Do the rtrictns on gay marriage at the state and feral level vlate the Uned Stat Constutn?
MANY BRONS HAVE CHANGED THEIR MDS ON GAY MARRIAGE
Its key provisns were tend as an artful promise that allowed those stat that wished to do so to adopt gay marriage laws. Sectn 2 of the statute says that a state is not required to give full fah and cred to gay marriag performed other stat if dog so is agast their own public policy. Unls that veat is accepted, one state n dictate the marriage policy of the whole natn by validatg gay marriag that other stat would then be bound to rpect.
Wholly apart om the law, there has culturally been a huge sea change popular sentiment the last several months, as many proment personag, om Hillary Clton to Rob Portman, have e forward supportg gay marriage, which now is poised to ga wispread public acceptance. To libertarians, the fact that many people disapprove of gay marriage rri no normative weight.
Gay marriage is a se where the legal norms would do well to get le wh social practic—but wh one veat. The libertarian norms are equally offend when the fenrs of gay marriage sist that all private parti, cludg private relig anizatns, be required to treat same-sex upl equally. By that origalist standard, the nstutnal se for gay marriage is ad on arrival for two related reasons.
SO YOU’D BE A LIBERTARIAN IF IT WEREN’T FOR ABORTN AND GAY MARRIAGE?
It is a pipe dream to believe that any Court that took this harsh attu toward polygamy, which was self a tradnal heterosexual practice, would have sanctned gay marriage.
Hardwick, which found that lay wh Geia’s police power to punish nsensual homosexual sodomy between two adults a private home.
No nnectn between fay, marriage, or procreatn, on the one hand, and homosexual activy, on the other, has been monstrated, eher by the Court of Appeals or by the rponnt. Not acrdg to Profsor Michael McConnell, who has argued that the Court should cle to hear the gay marriage s on the basis that the mocratic procs should be left to work through this issue on a centralized basis. A clean cisn favor of gay marriage ends this bate bee there are no follow-on qutns of implementatn of the sort that would have happened on abortn, even if Roe had been cid the other way.
THE LIBERTARIAN ARGUMENT FOR GAY MARRIAGE
The strongt se for strikg down all barriers to gay marriage rts, I thk, on the abily of the state to fd any fensible ratnale to sist on the same tradnal fn of marriage that rejected the crimal sodomy s. This odd tersectn between gay rights and state power was brought to the fore 1979 Gay Law Stunts Associatn v, Pacific Telephone. ” This led the urt to reject Pacific Telephone’s “alleged employment discrimatn agast homosexuals.
CALIFORNIA VOTERS WILL BE ASKED TO REAFFIRM GAY MARRIAGE PROTECTNS ON 2024 BALLOT
Unr the current law, this prosaic argument go a long way to diffe the charge that the advot of gay marriage are makg up their se out of whole cloth. Wrers like me are required to choose between an origalism that cuts strongly agast any regnn of gay marriage, and a libertarianism that cuts equally strongly the oppose directn.
That solutn answers the ncern that a new legal regime favorg gay marriage will be foisted on an uneasy public by an elist Supreme Court that is unduly swayed by a small and termed factn whose polil fluence is far excs of s social support. If he wants to mata his own fn of liberty nsistently, the thor of the Lawrence opn has to go the whole ne yards and e down favor of gay marriage.
I've been argug wh some people on Redd and for some reason they all thk that Libertarians are all homophobic and hate the LGBTQ+ muny (They don't re that I'm Bisexual but whatever). In April of 2011, The Amerin Conservative published an article wrten by me entled “The Libertarian Case Agast Gay Marriage. ” In addn, the magaze reported on a bate I had wh gay marriage advote Jonathan Rch, sponsored by Amerin Universy, which I elaborated on the arguments ma my article.
CALIFORNIA STILL HAS AN ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE LAW ON THE BOOKS. VOTERS ULD REMOVE NEXT YEAR
The sence of my argument agast gay marriage was that would ph an activy—gay relatnships—that prevly existed “ the realm of eedom” to ernment-occupied terrory. Of urse, we already have gay marriag. Jt as heterosexual marriage, as an stutn, preced the ventn of the state, so the homosexual versn existed long before anyone thought to give legal sanctn.
I was ntent wh this “hold the le” stance, which drew a le the sand between the unnquered terrory of gay relatnships and the ernment-occupied terrory of heterosexual marriage, until I applied to other areas… and to my own life experience. I kept up the battle agast this statist “vasn” on Twter, where I railed agast the Supreme Court cisn as “a disaster for gay people”—and then I had an epiphany.