On Gay Marriage

As a self-declared libertarian with an asterisk, to wit, one who wants the government out of as many aspects of our lives as possible while supporting a big and mean US military capable of turning our enemies into puddles of goo and piles of ash and rubble, I am somewhat conflicted on the gay marriage issue. I am using this post not to reach any conclusion or advocate any position, but to lay out my own confused thinking. Think of it as 21st century therapy for someone who usually does not write about these sorts of topics.

I really don't care what consenting adults do to each other on their own time and dime. I, furthermore, support decriminalizing, oh, heck, legalizing drugs, and ending the absurd "drug war" with which I have had years of experience. Drug use should be a matter for individuals, health professionals, and the private sector, e.g., if you don't want your employees using, you have the right to fire them for using. I do not see it as a matter for legions of bureaucrats, consultants, cops, prosecutors, and jailers living on the taxpayers' dollars. I favor rescinding nearly all anti-gun legislation, and find that the evidence supports the view that more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens means less crime and insecurity. I want taxes and government spending reduced drastically, and I want an end to the dominance of the liberal philosophy that sees life as a series of problems that needs government solution. As I have said before, the President of the United States should matter more to our friends and enemies abroad than to Americans at home. We should have an Uncle Sam, not a Daddy Sam.

Let me turn now to today's garbled topic, the issue of gay marriage. It is not a simple one of right vs. left. We see Republican libertarians supporting the idea of gay marriage, and black churches, stalwart supporters of the Democrats, opposing it. It is not only about "civil rights" or government power over our lives. It is about the shape and future of basic institutions developed over thousands of years. Its proponents demand that marriage be completely redefined from what it has been in the western world for hundreds if not thousands of years. Whenever such a change is demanded, it is good to resist it. Long established institutions have been long established for a reason, to wit, they presumably work or at least perform a socially useful function. Demands for radical changes in basic institutions should face obstacles, and should be required to make the case that the end result will be "better," however one defines "better." The marriage institution, of course, has been under pressure for a long time. The introduction of no-fault, easily available divorce being one of those pressures. Changing public mores, too, have brought the venerable institution further into question, e.g., in the United States, the most socially conservative of the western nations, nearly half of all children are born out of wedlock. The challenge to marriage posed by these changes has produced negative social phenomena: The correlation between single mothers and poverty is very strong; children from single parent homes have a host of problems not the least being increased criminal tendencies.

To demand a complete redefinition of the institution, in my view, puts a burden on the demander to show that there will not be a further increase in serious social pathologies (e.g., what is the impact on children?) for which we will all pay. In addition, of course, redefining marriage away from the one-man-one-woman equation means opening it not only to gay marriage but to polygamous marriage and perhaps other constructions at odds with traditional western values. If marriage is no longer the union of "one man and one woman," with what moral or logical justification do we restrict it to just two people? The proponents of gay marriage have to answer that.

Redefining marriage would have major legal and economic consequences. They are too many to list exhaustively, but we see implications for tax policy, for immigration law, for benefits of various kinds, for the issue of who might be required to testify against whom in trial, and many others. This is not a simple matter, and its proponents do themselves no favor by trotting out hysterical arguments about human rights, and ignoring the details.

For now, I oppose redefining marriage from its current definition. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of the state deciding who can live in a marriage-like arrangement. I can see a compromise in which the state acts as the enforcer of some sort of contract between people who decide to live together, the details of the arrangement being up to the individuals. I see no reason for the state to force churches to conduct gay weddings, any more than I think it right for the state to force, say, a Catholic Church to marry people who are not Catholic. The state, of course, would still have to define the issue of benefits and tax policy, and that would be a battle royal.

I would also like to see numbers on how many people we are talking about. How many gay marriages would we see? Given that heterosexual couples are less inclined to marry than before, why are gay couples so eager? Or are they? Is this all a stunt meant to undermine a major institution of our civilization? I don't know.

There is no clean answer to this. I certainly do not have it. I hope that others smarter than I will. Anyhow, I promise to avoid these sorts of discussions in the future.  They are not my forte.