My friend Richard Rider argues for No on 8 on another page of this newspaper that homosexual marriage’s “time has come.”
I am certain that is shorthand for something deeper, but it is neither a legal nor a moral argument – it is an argument of expediency unworthy of serious consideration. If that is the level of argument for or against anything, we are all in trouble.
MY libertarianism tells me that government should be limited…in my case VERY LIMITED, but what government there is should be determined by the citizens, not by the Courts.
Personally, I want government out of marriage altogether – I support religions setting their own rules for those who voluntarily participate, and contracts for the rest of us who wish to participate. For those who wish to simply cohabit, they may do so with or without contract.
The problem comes with government. It is government that determines how singles, couples, or multiples will be taxed; it is government that determines rights of survivorship; it is government that determines rights of ownership; it is government…
If government treated all individuals as individuals, regardless of their “marriage”; regardless of their “income”; regardless of their social contracts with others (single or multiple); then I would not give a fig about Prop.8 and in fact it would not be in question, nor would have the previous proposition, nor could the courts have had anything to overturn.
But government IS involved. HEAVILY, and it is my contention that insofar as the government IS involved, that involvement may be constrained or mitigated by the citizens.
I would love government involvement constrained to simply reading and interpreting the written words of a contract, as written, between two (or more) people. Instead, government places barriers: These two people pay x because they are of opposite sex and have a State issued contract, while these two people pay Y because they don’t; these two people may take ownership of property as M, but these two people may not; these two…
It is insanity. We need to get government out of our lives, but what government there is should be under the rule of the citizens of 50 separate “experiments.”
“Out! Damn Spot!”
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