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The whole homosexual marriage issue is simple

Yet again we see on the issue of homosexuals marrying that conservatives and left-wingers are just arguing over whose prejudices the law will validate, rather than should the law validate anyone’s prejudices. Why oh why are people on both sides not calling for the obvious solution to this (non)-issue: get the state out of the marriage business.

We do not require the state to sign off on most contracts between two people, so why should marriage be any different? Sure, let the courts get involved if there are disputes or malfeasance just as it does with any contract (that is what civil courts are for), but by de-politicising the whole institution and treating it as just another civil contract, the whole tedious issue goes away. If religious conservatives choose not to recognise ‘gay marriage’, well fine, that should be their prerogative. If a homosexual couple want to declare to the world they are ‘married’, well how is that the business of anyone but the people involved?

47 comments to The whole homosexual marriage issue is simple

  • I mentioned this idea to a couple of gay friends, and they gave me that deer-in-the-headlights look…

    Unfortunately, even though most of the more militant folks are very anti-government in many respects, they couldn’t even start to grasp the idea that maybe it’s a good idea to give the government less power when it comes to regulating people’s lives – except when it favored their personal situation.

    “But… how would we get tax breaks for being married?”

  • On the whole, I agree Perry. But I don’t think it’s correct to call people on both sides of the issue prejudiced. It’s quite simple: the left is offering more liberty to live as you like than are right-wingers. That’s being progressive – not prejudiced.

  • nick

    The Left want to control everything, including gay marriage, and they want me to pay for it – hardly offering me more liberty to live as I wish. As if liberty was theirs to offer anyway!

  • Marriage is not just a contract, it is a legal status than contains elements that cannot be replicated by contract.

    One example is spousal privilege — why abolish that?

    Another is the law of intestacy — Why force people, gay or straight, to spend resources on drafting a will if the intestacy laws as they apply to spouses provide an instant and no-cost alternative?

    Ask any gay couple how difficult and expensive it is to “replicate” marriage via formal contracts and then try claiming that it somehow makes sense to force everyone to do the same.

    Baby, meet bathwater. Bathwater, meet baby.

  • Mike Lorrey

    On the contrary, the issue of gay marriage is NOT about making gays more free. The ONLY feature of marriage that cannot be replicated within the confines of conventional contract law is the inheritability of social security benefits. I have repeatedly commented on this with gay friends, and they just ignore the point completely, a few admit that that is, in fact, the whole point. So this whole movement for gay marriage here in the US is not about gayness, it is about expanding the nanny state.
    When I detail how marriage licensing only came about here in the US as mandated for regulating interracial breeding. Free whites were never obligated to get marriage licenses since the Revolution. As state sactioned marriage is legally bigamous, a bond between you, your spouse, and the state, it is the legal avenue through which the state justifies interfereing in your parenting of your children. It astounds me that gay folks feel that they will be more free by putting themselves into chains, and belies the true nature of the gay marriage agenda.

  • No, it is a contract and like so many contracts, it has special characteristics (much like conveyancing or maratime contracts). Just because a marriage is not done through the state, that should change nothing regarding such issues as intestacy. If you are married via civil contract, you are married.

  • RAB

    The trouble is Perry that even when it becomes a matter of Contract law it becomes politicisised.
    Has anyone had a close look at the Family Division lately?
    The politics is in the fact that the Govt want to give Cherie Blair and her learned friends power over us and expect us to pay for the privilege of their wisdom in situations that we could have sorted out quite happily amongst ourselves.
    The next “it’s not fair! we have to have a level playing field” cause is the living together. They want legal right to half of everything too!
    How many houses did Two Jags say he was going to build? Double it. Cos thats what’s going to be needed when we all live alone.
    Who in his right mind is going to let that wild bird you met at that party stay for the weekend if on Tuesday she’s down the Courts suing for half the house.

  • RAB et al. – like other issues, once you bring the legality of marriage to the free market, problems such as you are describing are eradicated by means of the fact that everyone is in the same boat. Shortly after establishing that marriage is a legal contract like any other of which the state will NOT be henceforth deciding the terms, observe the free market offering well-recognized marriage ‘packages’ – marital contracts on a menu – law firms competing for business by providing the most bulletproof legalese, etc. etc. It really isn’t that hard a concept, and would be a hell of a lot better than making the state the judge of whether what you have is marriage or civil union or nothing at all.

  • RAB

    Ah but WHO enforces the contracts?
    By WHO’s authority?
    There is LAW and then there is ENFORCEMENT.
    They should work hand in glove.
    So I think we can all see where this government has been going wrong.
    We, the people, are the authority
    but we got sidelined long ago.

  • veryretired

    We are on the verge of a redefinition, indeed, many redefinitions, as we enter a period in which evolution in a cultural sense causes all of us to have to deal with people and situations that had previously been kept hidden, denied, or simply did not exist.

    I don’t think we have yet realized the enormous and varied ramifications of a world-wide culture in which everyone believes their particular set of beliefs and way of life must be respected.

    There have been many comments about the religious fanaticism of the fundamentalists, of various religious sects, as they recoil from the threats posed by contact with forms of thought and behaviour which contradict their most deeply held beliefs. This reaction, however, is not restricted to religious fundamentalists only.

    Supposedly tolerant progressives, cited above, regularly hold demonstrations and riots because old economic models are breaking down, new genetically designed crops are being planted, and many processes in agriculture, animal husbandry, and medical research are becoming increasingly automated and impersonal.

    In the near future, bio-engineering, gene therapies, and cloning may make many of our centuries old concepts of how life should look, how long it should last, and how decisions about its inception and conclusion should be made, obsolete and in need of serious, and painful, reconsideration.

    With all due respect, and believe me, I consider Perry’s opinions to be worthy of considerable respect, this is not a simple question at all. It is only the tip of an enormous iceberg.

    Forms of marriage, of co-habitation, of conception, of prolongation of life, of reconstruction of life, of the structure of life, of the composition of the family, of the relationship between multiple partners, their children, and children’s children’s children, all artificially designed and prolonged, and a million more significant and contentious aspects of our social and cultural structures and forms will have to be digested, fought over, and, finally, dealt with in some way.

    As an old sci-fi fan, I have eavesdropped as a lot of these possibilities have been thought and written about by better minds than mine. After millenia of stability, much of it based on isolation and ignorance, the people of this age are faced with possibilities they had never considered, and values they had never held, and ideas they had never thought about.

    The critical need to minimize the power that the majority can exercize over the few, or the one, is not some theoretical debate, esoteric and ultimately meaningless. We are on a journey into terra incognita on a scale rarely confronted in our past. The definitions of much more than “What is a marriage?” will have to be reconsidered.

    I contend it would be better, both morally and practically, if these issues were decided by individual choices freely made by citizens whose liberties were respected and protected, rather than a central group of autocrats, regardless of political alignment or religious affiliation, claiming the right or duty to direct the path of our development.

    What will we call a being who never grew in a womb, has entire limbs and organs that are artificial, has a human brain directly connected to a world-wide computer network, and can reproduce only through cloning?

    And if two of them want to get married, what do we call it, and who gets possession of the robotic dog if they split up?

    Our children will live in interesting times, indeed.

  • CFM

    Re-definition is the point. Just as with the ever-mutating definitions of “racism” (Reference the post addressing the Seattle School Board a few days ago,) Gay Marriage is just one more example of the myriad attempts of the “progressive” Left to re-design society according to its own twisted fantasies.

  • michael farris

    Have many libertarians have gone through state dictated marriages and how many of them are going to do something constructive about it (divorce and head off to a lawyer to draft some civicl contracts)?

  • guy herbert

    There are reasons one might go into a state-regulated marriage while not approving of state regulation of marriage. One might find the state mandated arrangements close enough for one’s own purposes; one might have religious or romantic reasons for wanting some sort of marriage that are strong enough to overcome the disadvantages of the compelled package deal; or one might find the regulated form convenient to one’s needs without any strong desire to get married for personal reasons.

    Divorce may well be impractical once one finds onself under the regulatory regime: foreign and religious marriages are frequently recognised by states, and the costs of dissolution may exceed those of continuing under state control, whether or not the balance is then against on one of the bases suggested above. But further, in many places it is impossible without proving a breakdown in the relationship, which makes michael farris;s suggestion unworkable.

  • michael farris

    “There are reasons one might go into a state-regulated marriage while not approving of state regulation of marriage.”

    I’m sure there are.

    “michael farris;s suggestion (is) unworkable. ”

    Well if the libertarian consensus is (as it it seems to be) that regulating marriage is not a proper function of the state, then certainly no libertarians should get married now through the state.
    A private ceremony and a visit or two to the lawyers should suffice. Maybe the older generation shouldn’t have to undo their mistake but they should certainly recognize it _was_ a mistake and urge younger libertarians not to repeat it.

  • (divorce and head off to a lawyer to draft some civicl contracts)?

    Divorce a viable marriage just ‘because’? Anyone doing that is a barking moonbat(Link) 🙂 A pre-nup? A sensible thing for anyone to do.

  • but… “Well if the libertarian consensus is (as it it seems to be) that regulating marriage is not a proper function of the state, then certainly no libertarians should get married now through the state.”

    I agree… and in the unlikely event I get married again to some hapless frau, I will not be involving the state this time, that is for sure.

  • Eric Sivula

    Personally, I agree with Perry that the simple solution is to remove marriage from the hands of the state.

    I would care less about the issue, except for only bit that always set my teeth on edge: Homosexuals claiming they just want the same “right” to marriage heterosexuals have. First, there is no “right” to marriage. Your right to life does not require another person’s consent, merely the lack of their active opposition. The other person has to accept your offer of marriage. The other bit that annoys me is this: Homosexuals have the same access to marriage everyone else does. In America, any unmarried adult (or minor with parent’s consent) male can marry any unmarried adult (or minor with parent’s consent) female. A gay man can marry a woman, just the same as a straight man can. They just don’t like the option.

  • Dominic

    I don’t agree that marriage can be between any combination other than a man and a woman. Note, I said “marriage”. The defining feature of marriage, as opposed to cohabitation or other arrangements, is that it makes supposedly permanent arrangements for support of children. This is why the State got involved in the first place – to enforce the contract, and hence the support of children even if the marriage itself breaks up.

    Gay couples cannot have children, and the jury is still out on whether or not they should be able to adopt (the major factor being whether there is provable harm to children due to growing up in single-sex households). Therefore they cannot get married, period.

    Gay couples can cohabit, and if they wish to they can make arrangements to split the couple’s resources. I don’t quite see why they should do that, given that the original logic was that women did not work and instead spent their time having and raising children, and therefore did not have income to fall back on if their husbands left them. In a gay couple (absent children, as per the above) there is no such factor, so I fail to see how one partner could claim a share of the other’s resources.

    Another aspect is the new idea to give cohabiting couples these rights anyway -why, for pity’s sake? If it was important to them, they should have drawn up an agreement, known as “marriage” and recognised by the state. By the fac that they did not, they forfeited the rights which marriage would have given them. Sheesh.

  • I´m for the homosexual marriage! It would be good for them: they are not different that heterosexuals

  • michael farris

    “Gay couples cannot have children, and the jury is still out on whether or not they should be able to adopt”

    This is allowed in a number of US states where same sex couples can and do adopt children.

    “(the major factor being whether there is provable harm to children due to growing up in single-sex households).”

    No such proof exists as yet.

    “Therefore they cannot get married, period.”

    According to you. They can according to the law in a number of countries. How do you propose to protect children in same-sex households? Saying you don’t like them messing up that nice word ‘marriage’ then what do you have positive to contribute?

  • screenbabe

    Where’s Mad Mel when you need her??

  • ATM

    Another area affected by marriage is visas for non-citizen and non-resident spouses. Of course the open borders libertarian crowd is against visas.

  • Rail

    Ya know, I wrote a lengthy rant on this on livejournal awhile back. I’m happy to know that I’m not the only one who sees what this is really all about.

  • Julian Morrison

    There are good reasons to involve the law in marriage – it relates to inheritance, next of kin, child custody, and a bunch of other stuff that touches on other people than the parties to the contract. Even an anarchic marriage law would probably have to require that the “prenup” mention these various matters.

  • David Friedman had an interesting post on this topic on his blog (Link) last year.

  • Your trackback is not working, so I thought I’d drop you this note and point you at my “motion”, along the same lines, more than a year ago: http://www.e-manonline.com/blog.php?entry_id=2494

  • toolkien

    Some people look at marriage as something that should be encouraged and subsidized, for bringing harmony to the civic body and create an environment for producing sound entrants to that civic body. Of course this is hardly a surety given all the bad marriages and rotten children cast upon the world, and one could argue that any good relationships would occur without subsidy, and go so far as to say that subsidy creates a greater likelihood of bad set-ups.

    So if the government is out of the encouragement and subsidy business, what is left is merely a function of distributing commingled property if a split occurs. I can’t see the government getting our of the arbiter business if a split occurs regardless of the bedroom activities. The government makes it easy on itself recognizing common law arrangements so as to have a boilerplate way to divide property after dissolution. What difference does it make what sexual combination was present? The idea is to make a split of property that will be enforceable and hopefully peaceable. That should be the role played by government/society/civic body, it any at all. A priori opinions of behavior that will or won’t be subsidized is anti-libertarian as far as I am concerned.

    So I agree with the original article in that the institution of marriage and the role of government should be reassessed rather than simply extend State supported benefits and subsidy. If there is a problem that married heterosexuals get benefits, and those benefits should be extended to homosexuals, then what about those who choose not to marry or are, for whatever reason, not likely to find a mate at all? Recognition as individuals should be paramount.

  • DuncanS

    A post from veryretired and Toolkien not only on the same day, but the same thread. A good day to be reading Samizdata IMHO.

    Sorry for the non-post.

  • Jacob

    “If you are married via civil contract, you are married.”

    Yes, sure. Still the state has to define which of those contracts it recognizes as “marriage” as defined in many laws: inheritance, social security benefits, awarding of citizenship to spouses, making decisions about medical treatements of spouses in an emergency, etc.

    As we’re not going to abolish those state interference laws any time soon, we need some “gay union certificate” that will be recognized to bestow on them all the “rights” (that is – welfare) that the state give married people, and that they (the gays) seek.

    Not a simple matter.

  • Here’s a scenario. Say the state of Massachusetts legalizes gay marriage. A gay couple seeks marriage counseling to save their “marriage” together. They approach a marriage counselor, and discover that he or she belongs to that school of thought that homosexuality is a psychological disorder. Can the couple sue for discrimination? In a libertarian world, no, but this ain’t a libertarian world.

  • ian

    It appears that there are many areas of same sex relationships where the law interferes and prevents contracts biting. If one partner is ill for example, as far as I know a contract cannot make the other person ‘next of kin’ as a marriage contract and now civil partnerships do. Why it should matter to the state who I consider to be my next of kin I don’t know.

    I agree with Perry that there is no legitimate role for the state in this. Indeed I see no reason for state rules on bigamy or polygamy/polyandry or any other sexual rrelationships. Relationships between consenting adults should be up to them.

    I stress consenting, because for those Mormons who still try to practice polygamy their second, third etc wives always seem to be younger and prettier than the last one. I wonder why…?

    If Chrsitians/Muslims/etc want to set special rules for their adherents that’s fine by me of course – just don’t demand they apply to every one else regardless of their faith (or lack of it).

  • Eric Sivula

    Ian, the definition of marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman is one of the oldest in human history. It was the defintion used by the Greeks and Japanese, long before either one had been influenced by Christianity, and when both thought that homosexual relationships were equal or superior the heterosexual ones.

    This is not a religion versus individual issue. This is a question about whether we want to continue defining a 7,000 year old cultural insitution the same way or not.

  • michael farris

    “Here’s a scenario. Say the state of Massachusetts legalizes gay marriage.”

    It has.

    “A gay couple seeks marriage counseling to save their “marriage” together.”

    Is there a “point” to this “scenario”?

    “They approach a marriage counselor, and discover that he or she belongs to that school of thought that homosexuality is a psychological disorder. Can the couple sue for discrimination?”

    I think the married couple would have to show some kind of damages. The only (very far-fetched) scenarios I can imagine this being an issue in are a)if the counselor in question is the only marriage counselor available, b) the counselling is being provided in such a way that the couple can’t switch counselors or c) the counselor serving in some kind of gatekeeper position and actively tries to prevent the married couple in question from receiving counselling from anyone else. Again all pretty unlikely. Or maybe if the counselor doesn’t tell the married couple their attitude right away but accepts them as clients (for marriage counselling) and then instead tries to counsel them out of their same sex attraction and refuses to refund any many already paid.

  • This is a question about whether we want to continue defining a 7,000 year old cultural insitution the same way or not.

    But we do not have to agree on that. I recognise marriage as a type of contract, with much to commend it (to a point), but as long as some sort of contract is involved, who cares if some people decide it is not ‘marriage’ at all? ‘We’ do not have to agree what marriage looks like by imbuing a given contract-that-purports-to-be-marriage with broader significance (or not).

    If some people say two homosexuals who claim to be are married are not in fact married, they just have a co-habitation agreement, well, who cares? As long as the contractual terms of the agreement/marriage (pick one) are duly entered into, that should be the end of the matter.

    How the state decides to treats a contract-that-purports-to-be-marriage is a separate issue. I would just argue that as long as how the consequences of marriage-like contracts are understood (such as for judging next of kin, inheritance etc.), then all getting the state out of the marriage business does is prevent one set of preferences regarding who has the right to enter in to contracts of a highly personal nature from precluding another. It should in fact simplify things in the end.

  • Alice

    Mr. De Haviland’s “libertarian” argument against State-recognized marriage fails the test; that is not actually a true libertarian argument.

    Libertarianism is a very, very hard taskmaster — each individual is completely free to do whatever he wants, AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT INTERFER WITH ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING.

    Marriage as traditionally understood is all about procreation, and the protection of the interests of the human lives created as consequence of marriage. As even the Clintonoids loved to say, “it is all about the children”. After all, the children are key participants in the “contract” of marriage, and yet they are not consulted (don’t even exist) when the marriage contract is theoretically drawn up.

    One could, I suppose, adopt the Hillary Rodham Clintonoid approach of giving the “village” responsibility for bringing up children. But that would be expanding the role of the state to a huge degree. Unfortunately, it looks as if leftists have already inserted the state where it counts, and are now intent on destroying what little is left of social structures that have kept societies functioning for thousands of years. The “redefinition” of marriage is a giant leftists social experiment — it is surprising Libertarians will so easily fall for it.

    I find it unsettling that self-proclaimed libertarians are so happy to cast aside libertarianism and behave like libertines.

  • Bungaloebill

    It is typical libertarian fantasy-land horsehockey to imagine a world in which the state does not have a vested interest in keeping marriage a solely heterosexual enterprise–and in battling against any effort to change the definition of “marriage” (with the ultimate goal of making the word meaningless), and then try to impose that fantasy on the real world, where the state certainly does have those interests.

    As was said earlier, marriage is not ONLY a contract, it is a legal status, and legal status can only be conferred by the state. Simply replying “no, it isn’t,” as Monty Python sagely noted, is not an argument.

    Although there are many good reasons to oppose “gay marriage,” the one that I personally feel strongest about is the purely semantic one. I am opposed to calling a commitment between a man and a man a “marriage” for the same reason that I am opposed to calling a cat a chair. Words have meanings, and we should be very wary of political movements that seek obliterate those meanings.

    That said, I do believe there is widespread support in this country for a compassionate domestic partnership law that would convey upon committed same-sex couples many (but not all!) of the benefits of marriage: inheritance rights, hospital visitation rights, even tax benefits. The devil would be in the details, of course, but I also believe such a law could be revenue neutral.

    In return, however, activists would have to STOP demanding that such unions be called “marriages.”

    Some will call it “separate but equal.” On the contrary, it SHOULD be separate because it IS different. Only the radical fringe denies that. The sooner we all accept it, the quicker the commitment ceremonies can begin.

    While the far left and the far right fight over “marriage” I sense a very sizeable group in the middle (including a plurality of gays and lesbians) who would be comfortable with this. You will know the fringe elements on both sides by this: They will HATE such a proposal.

  • Mike Lorrey

    Alice,
    Marriage is more like a philanthropic foundation: it is a partnership engaged in gifting life and/or education to young lives in how to get along in the world.

    Whatever benefits such a foundation particular corporate structure enjoys from the government can NEVER be considered a matter of equal protection/equal rights, because a marriage per se, as a fictional corporate entity of two or more persons, is an artificial person, not a natural person.

    Governments do, in fact, have lots of regulations about what specific benefits it chooses to allow certain corporate structures to enjoy, and it is not discriminatory when it gives certain benefits to one type of corporate structure and not to others. Governments also have regulations restricting what persons can be involved in certain types of corporations: the SEC specifies, for instance, that private stock offerings can only be purchased by investors who are certified to have a certain amount of income and/or net worth, as well as restrictions on who can legally form a corporation and how. Thus, it is not inconsistent or discriminatory for a marriage corporation to be strictly defined as a partnership of a man and a woman, with no consideration given to their personal sexual preferences.

    The states only interest is in ensuring that the natural persons who have a personal interest in these corporate entities are fairly treated when that corporation is dissolved, and in some cases in how they are managed during the course of the corporations normal operations: management vs labor, consumer care, product quality and safety, etc.

  • “even tax benefits”

    Why should gay people get tax benefits that regular unmarried straight people don’t get? What have they done that is so special?

  • Mr. De Haviland’s “libertarian” argument against State-recognized marriage fails the test; that is not actually a true libertarian argument.

    But I could not care less what the ‘libertarian’ arguments is – I care only to form the theory which best explains reality and let the -isms take care of themselves.

    You argument comes unstuck by assuming that obligations towards children can only be framed with the context of conventional marriage and that is a very alarming notion. I would argue that the obligation is a moral on the people who created the child and therefore a legal one quite independent of the parents contractual relationships with each other. It does not take a village… but it also does not always take a marrage.

    As was said earlier, marriage is not ONLY a contract, it is a legal status, and legal status can only be conferred by the state. Simply replying “no, it isn’t,” as Monty Python sagely noted, is not an argument.

    So you are saying that contracts are never entered into outside of state sanctioned legal structures??? Moreover all contracts are a ‘legal status’ but not all laws are the laws of states. Try working at a commodity exchange if you do not understand what I mean.

    And as for the ‘interests of the state’, not surprisingly I am really not all too concerned with the state’s ‘interests’, particularly as they have a tendency to not coincide with those of most people trying to live within that state. Social consequences are of interest to me but state interests rarely matter to anyone not on dirtectly or indirectly on the state’s payroll.

  • Why should gay people get tax benefits that regular unmarried straight people don’t get? What have they done that is so special?

    Indeed, but why should ANYONE get ‘tax benefits’? I would rather everyone just get screwed less by the state.

  • Julian Morrison

    In regard of marriage and children: there’s lots of ways to get children outside marriage, and lots of ways for gays to “have children” inside gay marriage, possibly including in our technological future, a child genuinely derived biologically from both.

    In regard of the long pedigree of hetero marriage, that’s an exaggeration at best and tricky at worst – the species of marriage which has prevailed in history has little similarity to the modern sort. It was for the most part arranged between families and concerned far more with legitimizing an heir and politically connecting dynasties than with personal romance. Also, most traditional marriage systems tolerate or completely don’t care about mistresses, including children by mistresses, and many traditional systems allow polygyny.

  • Uain

    This all seems to be off on a rather theoretical angle.
    At least in the USA, the government is involved so deeply in all aspects of contracts and contract law (I am told most Court decisions relate to contracts in one way or another) that you can’t escape it. Gay marriage is just another avenue for yet another “victim” class to use the power of government to relieve others of their liberties and not a small amount of their hard earned cash.

  • The only (very far-fetched) scenarios I can imagine this being an issue in are a)if the counselor in question is the only marriage counselor available, b) the counselling is being provided in such a way that the couple can’t switch counselors or c) the counselor serving in some kind of gatekeeper position and actively tries to prevent the married couple in question from receiving counselling from anyone else.

    Points B and C apply if marriage counseling does not operate within a relatively free market. Even Massachusetts isn’t that backward.

    My choice of Massachusetts as the setting (weren’t same-sex marriages eventually invalidated there?) is oddly relevant to Point A. This is the same state where Wal-Mart was forced to stock morning-after pills after abortion rights activists went on a screaming rampage. Wal-Mart does not have a retail pharmacy monopoly in Massachusetts, and is thus not the only place where abortifacient medicines can be sold. But it has to sell the stuff anyway because it’s discriminatory not to do so.

    The point of this query is to explore the next step in antidiscrimination law that legalized gay marriage would open up. Marriage counseling is the first thing that comes to mind. I believe that many gay activists will cite similar reasons to require marriage counselors to not turn away gay couples seeking counseling to keep their unions together.

    They’re already lobbying to ban psychologists from counseling people to change their sexual orientation, even though they don’t have solid evidence that homosexuality is immutable. Banning a certain type of counseling and requiring it are two different things, but it’s not a huge step from one to the other. After all, the abortion lobby was demanding that hospitals (even religious ones) supply abortion services long before it started telling Wal-Mart what it has to sell. (Sorry, no link – it’s hard to find news stories from the 1980s on the Internet.)

  • Dominic

    According to you. They can according to the law in a number of countries. How do you propose to protect children in same-sex households? Saying you don’t like them messing up that nice word ‘marriage’ then what do you have positive to contribute?

    What I meant was that I have not seen sufficient evidence (on either side) as to whether there is harm to children from growing up in a single-sex household. I don’t care what other countries legislate – we are talking absolutes here.

    I don’t care about the word ‘marriage’, but I do care about the concept of ‘marriage’ as being separate from ‘living together’. The reason for that is that it includes all sorts of extra responsibilities, designed to ensure that children are raised properly.

    As for the rights of married couples, as ian said up-thread, I fail to understand why the State should care about how I choose to define my next of kin. However, given the demographic situation in Europe, tax breaks for children seem one of the less objectionable purposes to which my tax money could be put.

    Perhaps the answer is a two-tier system, with some kind of not-quite-marriage, a cohabitation contract or whatever, which is open to any grouping of consenting adults, carries next-of-kin status and what-not, but whose terms are governed by contract clauses rather than law. The actual marriage would carry tax breaks for children produced and enforce support of progeny in case of divorce.

  • ian

    Someone back up the thread made some disparaging comment about libertines rather than libertarianism. This is simply another attempt to impose public standards on private behaviour and as such is unacceptable. I say it again – what you believe is up to you, but neither you or the state are going to impose that belief on me.

  • Nick (not the usual one)

    I would care less about the issue, except for only bit that always set my teeth on edge: Homosexuals claiming they just want the same “right” to marriage heterosexuals have. First, there is no “right” to marriage. Your right to life does not require another person’s consent, merely the lack of their active opposition. The other person has to accept your offer of marriage.

    All that means is that marriage is a right couples have as opposed to singles. And since everyone in the discussion knows that couples are what is being talked about, it’s a non-argument.

    The other bit that annoys me is this: Homosexuals have the same access to marriage everyone else does. In America, any unmarried adult (or minor with parent’s consent) male can marry any unmarried adult (or minor with parent’s consent) female. A gay man can marry a woman, just the same as a straight man can. They just don’t like the option.

    Whereas this is an argument, but a bullshit one, equivalent to saying that separate toilets and drinking fountains for blacks and whites was equal because each race had one.

    Because marriage is something couples do, access has to be seen in those terms: heterosexual couples can marry, homosexual ones can’t (in most places) and that is not equal.

    To me, the issue is morality. Denying marriage to homosexual couples – and denying them the word, if they want to use it – is immoral, pure and simple.