According to a New York Times story of June 25, an essential part of the coalition that brought “gay marriage” to the Empire State consisted of Republican financial high-rollers who gave Republican legislators cover for voting in favor of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “marriage equality” bill while generously funding the pro–“gay marriage” ground campaign, and who “were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views.”
More intellectual and political confusion would be hard to pack into one sentence.
Advertisement
“Gay marriage” in fact represents a vast expansion of state power: In this instance, the state of New York is declaring that it has the competence to redefine a basic human institution in order to satisfy the demands of an interest group looking for the kind of social acceptance that putatively comes from legal recognition. But as Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York and others argued during the days before the fateful vote on June 24, the state of New York does not have such competence, and the assertion that it does casts an ominous shadow over the future. For if the state in fact has the competence, or authority, to declare that Adam and Steve, or Eve and Evelyn, are married, and has the related authority to compel others to recognize such marriages as the equivalent of what we have known as marriage for millennia, then why stop at marriage between two men or two women? Why not polyamory or polygamy? Why can’t any combination of men and women sharing financial resources and body parts declare itself a marriage, and then demand from the state a redress of its grievances and legal recognition of it as a family? On what principled ground is the New York state legislature, or any other state legislature, going to say “No” to that, once it has declared that Adam and Steve, or Eve and Evelyn, can in fact get married according to the laws of the state?
There is a curious rhetorical fact that has usually gone unremarked in these debates, but which is worth pointing out. That what the New York state legislature approved has to be described, not as marriage, but as “gay marriage” or “same-sex marriage” is itself a verbal indicator that what is being done here is counterintuitive. We all know, or thought we knew, what marriage is, and to add the qualifier “gay” or “same-sex” is a tacit admission by the proponents of the practice that it requires an appeal to authority to enforce what seems strange, odd, not right. The verbal tic of “gay marriage” or “same-sex” marriage is thus itself a rhetorical warning sign that what was done in Albany was an exercise in raw state power, the state’s asserting that it can do X simply because it claims that it has the power to do so.
And that is an exercise of power that libertarians ought, in theory, to resist, not support.
New York State notwithstanding, the argument over marriage will and must continue, because it touches first principles of democratic governance — and because resistance to the agenda of the gay-marriage lobby is a necessary act of resistance against the dictatorship of relativism, in which coercive state power is used to impose on all of society a relativistic ethic of personal willfulness. In conducting that argument in the months and years ahead, it would be helpful if the proponents of marriage rightly understood would challenge the usurpation by the proponents of gay marriage of the civil-rights trump card.
Excellent. I hope Mr. Williamson reads this. And the state's coercive efforts to redefine our most central social institution will not end with this law. All manner of lawsuit and administrative harassment will be brought to bear to silence the dissenters. Andrew Sullivan and the like are prone to dismissing this worry, but believe me, the reason I post only as a "Canadian Conservative" and not under my own name (as I would prefer) is that, as a university professor, I would be subject to serious penalty if I were to voice my opposition to same sex marriage openly. If you don't believe me, check out the doings of Canada's Orwellian "Human Rights Commissions". Or survey the legal landscape in the UK, where established foster parents have been kicked off the fostering rolls because of their views on this topic. Or see Massachusetts, where Catholic Charities was thrown out of the adoption business over it.
"Permissive statism" we might call it - the latest chapter in the modern state's long war against families and churches - two of the corporate institutions that most threaten the capacity of sovereigns to act without moral stricture or check.
One useful historical analogy that you don't mention is the hostile laws against interracial marriage which also fell as a consequence of the civil rights movement. These were laws that denied the legitimacy of certain types of human relationships, and when society decided, quite rightly, that those relationships were in fact legitimate, the laws had to go. Why don't you address this, instead basing your argument on the sophistry that "since our language becomes contorted when we talk about gay marriage, then gay marriage MUST be wrong"? This is mark of sheer desperation.
You made a critical error: "certain types of human relationships" were not denied by those laws. Rather, the normal marriage relationship (the type of relationship in question right now) was denied between certain races. So your analogy fails.
When the pro-SSM lobby attempted to get their wishes by use of the judiciary conservatives said (and rightly so) "this shouldn't be imposed by judicial fiat. It's for the people to work out through their elected legislators". Well, they did. Now you're saying that THAT'S invalid too.
The argument that marriage was unchanged for millennia is no argument at all. Autocratic rule was normal for millennia too, before someone figured out a better way.
Ideally the government should be out of the marriage business altogether. But if they're going to be in then there's no justification to not treat everyone equally, and it's especially no justification to cite religious grounds.
(and just by the way, the spam filter you're using is truly obnoxious)
It is nothing short of legalizing "2 + 2 = 5" and then using the compulsion of the state to require that people believe it.
The term "gay lobby" makes this social movement sound almost respectable, like commercial bakeries or the bottling industry.
The "gay lobby" is a thin veneer over a large freicorps of Alinskyite stormtroopers, who denounce any resistance as "bigoted and homophobic" and then go after it.
A chief difficulty of dealing with that unpleasantness is that life is too short to expose yourself to it very often. But a squaring of the jaw is in order now because of the threat "gay marriage" poses to the institution of marriage and therefore posterity.
And the chief rhetorical problem in fighting back is to find seven million new ways to express the law of idenity: A is A. Marriage is marriage. It is something and not something else.
No one is requiring you to believe anything. The state of New York is merely extending to gay marriages the same treatment it extends to current marriages. The stormtroopers, freicorps, and non-baker-like gay lobby aren't going to disappear you in the middle of the night.
While I admire your sqare-jawed determination to engage in debate, could you please specify exactly what the threat is to having the state extend the same treatment to gays that they do to straights?
Lets pretend two people were to have a ceremony and were to exchange vows and rings declare themselves married and live together and call themselves husband and husband or whatever the case may be, and basically live like married people do.
For them it probably does not matter what the state thinks other than missing out on some of the conveniences like that of having the state recognize the contract that they made together, I rather doubt you want to spend resources going after these people. I would suggest to my gay friends that they should go ahead and hold your wedding ceremonies regardless of the states approval, you don't need the government to tell you that you are married.
The Cato Institute has written some interesting papers on gay marriage and the practical problems that it solves, if you are interested in hearing what libertarians think as opposed to what they "should" think. I think there is a Conservative case to be made for gay marriage, I wrote about it in the comments somewhere in the corner if you want to see it.
Mr. Weigel's piece today is an exercise in missing the obvious.
He writes, "“Gay marriage” in fact represents a vast expansion of state power:..the state of New York is declaring that it has the competence to redefine a basic human institution."
But surely if the state can recognize marriage, and thereby grant it differential treatment, it must define the scope of that recognition and do so within the Constitutional bounds of equal protection.
Next he tells us that the fact that "gay marriage" includes the modifier "gay", that it must be "strange", "odd", "counterintuitive", or "not right". If so, then the use of the term "women's rights" must also mean that it is "counterintuitive" that women have rights.
Third, he bemoans the fact that "otherwise sensible" young people see gay rights as part and parcel of overall civil rights. This cannot be, he assures us, because it is the duty of the state to support age-old institutions in their previous forms. However, this comes after praising the American people for overturning segregation, despite the fact that it was "hallowed by custom (and prejudice)".
And how does he justify this? By the fact that the wrongness of segregation was obviously an affront to our professions of love for equality and liberty. But what was true then of things like housing equality is also true now of marriage equality: the farcical dire warnings of the consequences of overturning long-standing tradition notwithstanding, no good reason exists for permitting this affront either.
Marriage is marriage, right? Which definition would you be talking about -- the one that allowed people of different races to marry, or the one that didn't? Because as recently as the 1960s, there were state governments that defined marriage as between a man and woman of the same race, and prohibited "mixing" of the races.
Look - if you oppose gay marriage for moral reasons, that's fine. But don't pretend your position is a strike against "tyranny" (nobody is forcing you to get married, and this law was passed by a democratically-elected body, hardly a tyrannical gesture). Even worse, don't pretend you're some kind of libertarian by opposing gay marriage enacted by a democratically-elected body. You're not, and the argument is frankly a little pathetic.
Am I the only person who thinks this is the biggest manufactured non-issue of our times?
Marriage is 1) a legal contract, and 2) a religious sacrament.
Is there anything gender-specific about the legal contract that differs from say, a legal adoption?
Whether the churches choose to recognize "gay marriage" is up to them - isn't that part of the "separation of church and state" the Left is forever harping about? If your church doesn't perform the ceremony, find one that does, or start your own. It's the American Way - or at least the California Way.
The more this thing rages on the more I suspect the gay marriage lobby has less interest in getting "married" than they do in yanking conservatives' chains.
I was outraged when the Massachusetts Supreme Court claimed that a right to gay marriage is in our state constitution -- because it is not to be found there, and I prefer to live in a constitutional republic than in an oligarchy of judges. But I would have voted for gay marriage in a referendum, and I believe that it is an acceptable decision for our political bodies to make.
While judges' decisions are based on analogies and are subject to slippery-slope problems, such as gay marriage leading to polygamy (which is a real threat to marriage), there is no reason why the people or their representatives will be forced to now allow polygamy.
Like most libertarians, I don't see how the state's monopoly of violence will be used to impose anything significant on the public, provided that opponents of gay marriage are not required to participate in gay marriages. I understand that clergy will not be required to perform such ceremonies; I would also like other marriage-related professionals and businesses to not be required to do so, just as I think others should be allowed to cater exclusively to gays. I think that libertarians, and even conservatives, should focus on this last issue, as it does potentially impact on the rights of people who are opposed to gay marriage.
Because "the way the parts fit" (which is shorthand for an argument I don't need to make here), a hundred years from now, the two guys with the marriage license down the street will still be "the gay married couple" and my great-great grandson and the woman he marries will be just plain married.
That being said, the state's "exercise of raw power" in granting to same-sex couples the same package of rights as hetero couples should not offend Mr. Weigel. True, it is not an exercise in furtherance of the worldview of the Catholic Church, but church and state are two different things, as surely even Mr. Weigel believes. The Church will go on, men and women will still cherish marrying within the Church, and no harm will come to the Church.
Where in the US Constitution does the Federal Government have the right to determine what is or is not a "legal marriage"?
Okay.....so then what DOES the Constitution say?
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."---10th Amendment
So...throw in the 14th Amendment "equal protection" clause...what CONSTITUTIONAL objections can you make against the NY law?
Perfect! We can't just remember the Constitution when it's convenient. It's also there when it allows things to happen that go against our beliefs. Thank you for this perfectly worded response, HistoryBuff.
The Constitution CLEARLY gives Congress the authority to decide.
You folks overlook(intentionally?) the SECOND part of Article IV,sec 1;
"and the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts,Records,and Proceedings shall be proved,and the Effect thereof."
"prescribe the manner" and "shall be proved",meaning CONGRESS decides what Act,Records,and Proceedings" that the other States have to give Full Faith and Credit to.
they did this by enacting DOMA.
I'd be interested to know Mr. Weigel's stand on "civil unions." Is this simply marriage by another name? Or does it allow gay people the tax and property benefits of married life while preserving marriage as we have always accepted it? Elton John has maintained his relationship with David Furnish is a "civil union." Yet when Frank Rich wrote about this last year in the NY Times, he contended, "Domestic partnerships and equal economic benefits aren’t antidotes...because as long as gay Americans are denied the same right to marry as everyone else, they are branded as sub-citizens, less equal and less deserving than everyone else. That government-sanctioned stigma inevitably leaves them vulnerable to other slights and discrimination, both subtle and explicit." It seems faulty logic to me, almost a domino effect. But I can't imagine the outcry today on either side of this issue if "civil unions" were on the table and not grouped in under "separate but equal."
The problem with gay mariage that is always missed is that (to paraphrase Daniel Moynihan) marriage is being defined down. If there is illegal, immoral, whatever to "deny" homosexuals the "right" to marry (the assumption being that the love between two men or two women is no less legitimate than the love between a man and a woman -- essentially all love is equal) what is the future basis to deny two 1st cousins or an Aunt/Uncle and niece/nephew the right to marry?
