If this article is any indication, support for gay marriage seems to be reaching bandwagon status. It is risky for any Democrat to oppose it, and there’s even a movement towards change among Republicans:
Even the Republican making headlines on gay marriage this month, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, is taking a stand that is less bold or principled than first meets the eye. He said his view changed because his son told him he was gay, two years ago. But every gay person is someone’s kid — a fact that surely occurred to him when he crafted his former position against same-sex marriage.
Amid this rapidly shifting ground, here are a half-dozen takeaways on the new politics of gay marriage:
The middle ground on marriage is disappearing fast
As recently as 2008, both major-party presidential nominees had nearly the same public position on marriage: let there be civil unions, not gay marriage, and let each state set its own policy. That was a safe view for pro-gay Democrats and moderate Republicans alike.
Today, that position is fully acceptable only to a diminishing slice of the electorate. For supporters of gay marriage, it looks like an insulting, separate-but-equal proposition. For opponents of same-sex unions, it’s an invitation to a chaotic patchwork of laws governing an immutable human institution.
(Also on POLITICO: Poll: 58 percent back gay marriage)
In a Washington Post poll this week, 64 percent of voters said the gay marriage issue should “be decided for all states on the basis of the Constitution,” while only 33 percent favored letting states make their own law.
As a libertarian, I support the right of adults to do whatever they want so long as they do not impinge upon the rights of others. But there is a problem with marriage which very few people want to discuss, and that is that marriage itself has a bad track record. The problem is state involvement. Marriage is not so much a “right” as it is an onerous legal obligation, one in which it is relatively easy to enter into, but which can be hellish to get out of, often involving mental trauma, financial expense, litigation, and the draconian jurisdiction of family law, with special courts empowered to ruin lives.
As someone who believes in keeping the state out of people’s lives (and out of the bedroom), I would like to get the government out of marriage altogether. At that point, it might be possible to see the debate over gay marriage as one involving a “right.” But I have never quite been able to see wanting to empower the state to police your domestic affairs the same way it does other people’s affairs as a right in the true sense of the word.
Many call this a debate over “marriage equality,” and in a sense it is that. But I’m not quite sure why a sexually free citizen would seek an equal right to be oppressed in family court. I know a wealthy gay couple who have been together for many years who told me that gay marriage would ruin them, because they have structured their financial affairs as two independent men, and if they were a cohabiting heterosexual couple, the IRS would come down on them like a ton of bricks. They are not the gay norm, of course, but there are a lot of gays who cohabit and love each other, but who just don’t want to marry. Some people enjoy that freedom, but once legal marriage is a possibility, the law can be invoked to deem a cohabiting couple to be the equivalent of a marriage. Whether both parties want it or not.
There have been warnings like this (but they are largely ignored):
Gay Palimony Suits in California were routinely dismissed by CA Courts based on the argument that Gays Could Not Legally Marry. NOW THAT GAYS CAN MARRY, the practical effect of the Ca Gay Marriage Ruling will be that Gay Partners In Long Term Relationships Will Have A Stronger Legal Basis for Filing Palimony Suits. So, gays in CA won’t even have to formally marry to get fucked up the ass by the fact that Gays have the right to marry in California.
We previously pointed out that a large number of gay couples registered as domestic partners in CA UN-REGISTERED right before the DP law in CA was about to change to make the assets of gay couples community property. THIS OBVIOUSLY MEANS that there is in fact a large number of Gay Couples in long term relationships in CA who DO NOT want their assets to be community property and who do not want to be legally liable for their partners’ debts.
It seems to us that the practical effect of The Gay Marriage Ruling in CA will be that the Gay Couples in CA who have lived together long term and who un-registered as Domestic Partners to avoid the “community property issue” will now be subject to Palimony Case Law.
(This almost happened to tennis star Martina Navratilova, but she appears to have been saved by Florida’s heterosexist traditions.) In other words, once there is state-enforced marriage, you can find yourself married whether you wanted to be or not.
So, while I believe in sexual freedom, my gratuitous (and no doubt annoying) advice to gay activists would be “careful what you wish for.”
Comments
11 responses to “Those who like freedom should be careful what they wish for.”
I really don’t get it. With all the experience we have had with the dysfunction of the state there are still huge numbers who believe the State is the answer to “their” problems.
See some of the comments on this abortion thread:
http://classicalvalues.com/2013/03/did-jesus-know-jewish-law/
Now if you look at the life of Jesus it is pretty obvious he was not a State guy. And yet vast numbers of his followers are.
As I am won’t to say in such cases: “It is a MIRACLE! Praise Jesus.”
Simon, you make no sense whatsoever. I shredded every one of your arguments.
Eric, you are indeed correct that same-sex marriage is not about getting the government out of anyone’s bedroom. No one who wants the government out of their bedroom fights for a license from the government to have their relationship recognized and regulated by the state. If you thought that the “gay rights” movement was about less government, you are wrong. It’s about more government.
Yet I still run into young “conservatives” who will say things like, “But I’m on gay marriage, I’m more libertarian.” I ask them what they mean, and they say that they support same-sex marriage because their small-government principles compel them to want government out of people’s lives. That makes no sense.
Imagine two homosexuals sitting around their living room in the evening with their French poodle, discussing the issue. We’ll just call them Adam and Steve.
Adam: I just wish the government would get out of our lives.
Steve: The government IS out of our lives.
Adam: I know, but I want them more out of our lives than they already are.
Steve: By recognizing and regulating our relationship?
Adam: Yes.
Steve: That makes no sense.
Adam: Well, what I really want is for them to allow us to get married.
Steve: We can. We can have a wedding tomorrow if we want. We just won’t have a document from the government.
Adam: Well that’s the part I really want.
Steve: A document from the government?
Adam: Yes. Because I want them out of our lives.
Steve: Hmmm…are you off your meds again?
Eric, in a community property state like California, isn’t it true that assets acquired prior to marriage, as well as debts, do not become community property upon marriage, and only assets & debts acquired while a married couple fit the definition, with the exceptions of inherited property or assets subject to a pre-nup? This doesn’t address the issue of palimony, only the legal definition according to the courts of community property/debts.
For instance, when a couple marry, separately owned real estate remains just that unless the couple voluntarily exchange title. And debts are not automatically transfered to the new spouse either. He or she never signed a contract with the lender.
As to palimony, I don’t see how it can be enforced in a same-sex marriage because marriage itself was unavailable, that is illegal until recently. Ex post facto, right?
My fiance lives in Mexico. I cannot sponsor him for a visa to come to the United States because even if we were to get married in Mexico City or Iowa (where gay marriage is legally recognized), the US federal government still would not recognize our relationship and consider us to be legal strangers. Since immigration is controlled by the federal government, that’s the end of the story. Getting the government out of marriage is a solution that causes more problems than it solves.
John S. arrives just in time to underscore my point that homosexuals want the government in their lives, not out.
Not to mention, of course, that it’s remarkably disingenuous for a pressure group to push their agenda on personal liberty grounds, and then immediately turn around every time they win, and use their victory as grounds to sue anyone who persists in disagreeing with their opinions…
The state has no interest in people’ feelings or how people may feel about each other or who an adult chooses to live with. If feelings and living arrangements were what marriage was about, the state would have no involvement in it.
Arrangements between people would be a matter of customary contract law.
Marriage is about the creation of new human beings, the protection and nurturing of children, and the forming of children into productive and well-adjusted members of a particular human society.
This is the state’s interest in marriage, which contemplates a male and a female living together permanently so as to carry out their childrearing duties. One might assume that the state would be more ready to dissolve marriages not involving children than those with children.
While all marriages do not produce children, all marriages have the correct form for producing children. Relationships in the correct form are the only ones that the state has any interest in recognizing.
If two individuals have some kind of arrangement that requires a contract, then go see a lawyer. Otherwise, the state should just stay out of your life. If two individuals have an arrangement they think should be of interest to the state, then let them visit the county clerk’s office, but only if they want.
John S., I sympathize with you. Prop 8 is on the SCOTUS calender soon, maybe a victory there will be solve the problem. Otherwise, consider emigrating to Mexico. The area around lake Chapala is beautiful and has a large colony of ex-pat U.S. citizens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chapala
Depending how bad things get here in the next few years, I’m seriously considering a move down there.
Joey, I think that most straight couples would also balk at the government “de-recognizing” their marriages, since civil marriage makes the partners each others’ legal next of kin. So it’s really not a question of “more government.” There wouldn’t be any “more government” than we have now with current civil marriages.
Besides, it’s because of already-existing government barriers that I have a need for my relationship to be legally recognized by the government in the first place.
I think this is all a media effort to pressure the SCOTUS to support Judge Walker’s fraudulent tossing of CA’s Prop 8. Arguments take place next week. This is an orchestrated campaign by the gay rights crowd and their supporters in the media. It is also artificial. Cheers –