Many of the more "left-libertarian types" might disagree with me. In fact I know some of them will. With all of the fervor over the whole Prop 8 thing in the People's republic of California, there has been quite the outcry over this. I see this on some of the blogs I read all the time. Frankly I'm sick of seeing it. It's not that I have anything against people who bet for the other team. I just don't care about the issue. And here is why:
1.) If you take the Anarcho-Capitalist (Market Anarchist) view there shouldn't be a government so leave it up to the movements of private contract enforcement to decide what they will and won't enforce, combined with the fact that the churches/religious organizations could do as they pleased in the same field. There I gave the AnCap line. Now for the more practical one.
2.) Marriage has, for a stupidly long time had religious subtext. It was a union brought together by the gods/God. Trying to make marriage a secular institution is ... an end-run around the issue at best. SO I have a better idea. Let's separate the religious nature of marriage from the legal and "official" nature of mutual contract between two individuals. This would do several things. It would shut up the religious right about a Federal Amendment banning Gay marriage. And it would let all of this play out on a smaller level, whether that be state, locality, or individual religious institutions.
Have the governments of both states and the Feds recognize any Civil Union Contract between two voluntary people that desire the legal/official rights and responsibilities of a couple etc.
Make marriage the sole area of religious institutions. Some institutions are already willing to marry homosexuals, others are not. Why not get the government out of marriage and let it go? Let the churches etc. fight it out amongst themselves. The simple fact of the matter is that this would allow straight or gay couples to get married, legally unionized, and any combination thereof, with no Federal WARRRGARBLE over the debate about who can and can't get married.
Free up competition in the market for unions/mates/marriages and let the chips fall where they may.
There, solved that problem. I doubt that many of the Liberals or Left-libertarians will agree with me, but that's okay. I don't need their approval to be right.
While the AnCap position is a logically consistent one, it simply isn't possible to go from massive statism to rampant Market Anarchy overnight. It's a process and smaller steps toward a better, more free, world are better than standing in our respective towers of intellectual fortitude shouting heretic at one another.
CCRKBA Blasts Biden For Latest School Shooting Response
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[image: CCRKBA Blasts Biden For Latest School Shooting Response]
School shootings are horrendous events that affect far more people than
they should. As tr...
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I agree with the proposal to separate religious marriage from the legal rights and obligations of the parties to the marriage. Unfortunately, however, the political will for such a change is almost certainly absent. I suggest that the An-Cap solution and your much more practical solution are similarly far from becoming a reality.
In the meantime, however, liberty-minded individuals should support efforts to expand liberties where they are unduly withheld. One such area is marriage equality. Several constitutional arguments provide a non-statist, presumably founding father approved, rationale for expanding marriage rights to same-sex couples.
I hope that in the short-term, marriage equality will be extended to same-sex couples, but the optimal long-term solution is to remove the religious connotation of marriage from consideration with respect to legal rights, obligations, and privileges.
I don't think people should get privs for shagging or shacking up or having kids.
Nobody gives me tax breaks for raising livestock and dogs...
Marriage equality is "screw whatever you want and leave the government out and don't make ME pay for your progeny, via woman, man, or goat."
That's MY version.
Government shouldn't have anything to do with marriage, nor churches, if anything, it should be outed as WHAT IT IS, contract law with tax breaks.
Asserting you are right doesn't make you right. First, marriage predates religion. Second, the churches don't want separation of state and marriage, it was the Reformationist who insisted the two be merged in order to weaken the Catholic Church. Third, if you did separate it the battle continue because the fundamentalists:
a. want the state to forbid liberal churches from performing marriages for gay couples and
b. demand that the state NOT grant any legal rights to gay couples.
The culture war exists here because the Religious Right demands that the state impose their morality on others. Privatizing marriage won't remove that demand from their agenda. And the Republicans are controlled by these people.