I was getting into a debate on the comment section of ThirdPartyWatch.com with respect to gay marriage. Some people on the board thought that the government should legalize gay marriage, whereas I (Hugh Jass) and others were advocating getting the government out of marriage altogether. What do you guys think?
(BTW, if you would like to see the comment section in reference, here is the link:
http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/03/05/phillies-blasts-obama-on-gblt-issues/#comments)
I don’t believe a marriage can be anything other than one man and one woman. But it’s of no business of the state to set guidelines on what and what isn’t a marriage. I personally wouldn’t recognise a marriage as anything other than one man and one woman. But that doesn’t mean I can force my opinion on Joe Homo down the street and force him to not recognize that as a marriage if he wants to.
Maybe a man and a woman want to get married but they don’t attend church or a house of worship and want to hire a lawyer to make a form stating each partners duties and obligations. If Joe Christian down the street doesn’t want to recognize a marriage as anything other than one man or one woman being married in a Christian church he doesn’t have to.
Marriage licenses are ridicules. Do you think Thomas and Martha Jefferson had to ask the state for permission to get married? One of the big reasons the state got involved in regulating marriage in the first place was to make sure Blacks and Whites couldn’t intermarry. Also there were some health reasons I think. Today the main reason for the state to regulate marriage is for taxing purposes (mainly fedreal income tax) and things of that nature.
I agree completely.
I believe the Church of England, which was the established church in Virginia, took a very keen interest in registering marriages.
The kings originally got involved in regulating marriages mainly because they wanted to excercise some control over inheritances and titles. The church got involved because they had an interest in breaking up tribalism - hence the laws against consanguineous marriage. Marriage was a regulated institution long before racial intermarriage became an issue.
I’m not into women, and yet I couldn’t care less whether or not gay people should be allowed to get married. That is the matter of each religious institution to decide for itself based on its sacred texts. I personally have no desire for marriage, and couldn’t care less which way religious institutions tend to go so long as the state is not involved.
I don’t think this topic is going to exactly be full of heated debate. Anyone posting to this site either thinks government should be out of marriage or is probably a troll.
Gay people can do what they want with other consenting adults, and they can call their relationships whatever they want, too. Neither I nor anyone else has to agree with the classification. I suspect that gay activists really want to force the rest of us to acknowledge homosexuality as legitimate and normal by forcing us to legally recognize gay marriage. That makes them officially normal and sane. But just as we all have a right to call our relationships whatever we wish, we also have a right to think certain behaviors perverse or deranged, and to refer to them as such. Ironically, this issue, put out as a matter of rights, is actually being used to push for further oppression.
It is easy to say government should be out of the marriage business, and I agree that it should, but there are still legal implications to marriage that have to be resolved: descent and distribution of estates, encumbrance and sale of property, rights of support, etc. There are also social implications: the marriage signals that the spouse is now off limits to seduction and as noted, if two men say they’re married which people like me consider a substantive impossibility, do I have to recognize it as a marriage in my dealings with the couple? Thus, there have to be some extant rules and a societal consensus on what constitutes a marriage. The Church previously instructed the State on this, and the State enforced the legal consequences. Over time and with increased secularization, the State’s role increased to the point where it now licenses marriage. With homosexual activism, marriage is completely severed from its roots as an ancient and pre-State institution and now marriage is whatever the State says it is.
Of course. Tyranny in the name of civil rights laws is still tyranny; the State is more than happy to get into the rights-granting business. The deviant and the sociopathic are rebuffed by the pre-State institutions, so they turn to the State for validation.
None of this was a big problem before a marriage license came along and it wouldn’t be a big problem after they are gone. You don’t need a license for any of this.
Marriage is nothing more than a union and a pledge of two people to be faithful to each other and to share their lives together. Two men can be married just as legally as a man and a woman. There is no reason to inject religion into the argument. You’re either married or your not. That’s all there is to it. Now, I don’t agree with gay marriage or the gay lifestyle but I can’t and wont force my views on others. If two men want to say they are married then what right do I have to say they aren’t?
Because marriage is a set of reciprocal rights and duties that run between a man and a woman, any children resulting from the marriage, and their community. It is not just two persons living together per the terms of a contract. Now if you want to do the latter that’s fine, but it’s not a marriage.
Whether gay marriage is legalized or not it will remain under government monopoly. The solution, as Phillies should realize but apparently refuses to acknowledge, is of course the same as for most other social problems involving the state: PRIVATIZE IT!
I wonder how long legalization at the national level has been a part of the LP platform. Just another reason for genuine libertarians to disassociate from it.
Are you saying that if a man and a women agree to live together under the terms of a contract they aren’t married?
I thought the LP supported the right of individual states to determine what marriage was.
A contractual arrangement is simply what’s in the four corners of the document. Tradition and religious faith define marriage, an institution that predates the State.
Tradition, and churches are no dfferent from the state in many respects, so they don’t predate the state. They are the state. Theocracies and churches were/are the most ancient and despotic forms of government..
From National Platform of the Libertarian Party, 1.9 Sexuality and Gender: “Repeal… state laws and amendments defining marriage.”
Actually, tradition and spirituality are what can enable a truly stateless society, if anything can. Maybe not extant traditions, but in any society such things as tradition are part of what makes society move smoothly. The venom towards religion and tradition many people have always baffles me. I can’t think but that it is because some people want there to be no standards of behavior or morality.
I said nothing about religion. I mentioned traditions and churches.
This.
And they are an integral part of society.
Traditions are like habits–they usually start out for good reasons (but not always), but over time, people forget what those reasons are and maintain traditions merely because they’re traditions. That’s counter-productive for society, although it helps maintain conformity (i.e. blind obedience). Sometimes we need to reassess traditions and make sure that they’re still worthwhile (or at least neutral). Unless someone wants to argue that blind obedience is a “good value.”