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gay marriage

Apparently anti-gay-marriage referenda are winning handily in three states.

I’m conflicted. As a Catholic I do not support gay marriage. As a libertarian, I dislike many laws that enact cultural preferences.

As a political idealist, I continue to think that the ethical approach would have been to disaggregate the bundle of rules known as “marriage” so that they could be individually used by individuals via contracts.

There is, in fact, no reason why a gay man should not be allowed to have his partner visit him in the hospital – in the same way that there is no reason that I should not be allowed to have my best friend visit me.

There is, in fact, no reason why a gay man should not be allowed to leave his assets to his partner, exempt from taxation – in the same way that there is no reason that I should not be allowed the same.

Etc.

The mantra “Gay rights are human rights” is half true. The problems are that (a) right now marriage rights are special rights, and gay politics have not sought to really distribute those rights widely, but just grab them as special privileges for themselves; (b) much of the gay marriage debate isn’t about law, but about societal acceptance, and as an anti-statist, I hate the law being used to express anything. I like a very very minimal set of laws, the only purpose of which is to directly prevent assault and fraud.

Maybe out in the asteroid belt we’ll get this right.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “gay marriage”

  1. Brian Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am

    [quote]As a political idealist, I continue to think that the ethical approach would have been to disaggregate the bundle of rules known as “marriage” so that they could be individually used by individuals via contracts.[/quote]

    Before people get so worked up on who should or shouldn’t be allowed to enter this contract, they might want to stop and ask themselves why government needs to be involved in the decision at all.

  2. HTRN Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    You’ve hit the nail on the head – it boils down to money, in this case, taxes.

  3. GB Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    Gay marriage is most likely a money saver for employers in MA. Before gay marriage large employers health plans covered spouses and same sex unmarried partners. The commitment to get on your partners health plan goes up a whole lot with gay marriage.

  4. Rick C Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    GB–not necessarily. Didn’t someone blog that the Glob announced a while back that they were telling all the unmarried-but-partnered gays that it was time to get married or lose their benefits? In such circumstances, the driving force is the opposite of what you posted.

  5. Rick C Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Uh, that doesn’t mean I disagree with your first sentence, tho.