With the recent news coming out of New York (pun intended and proudly displayed in italics), the predictable backlash from the right takes some unpredictable turns.
I’m impressed with the cleverness of some of the arguments made against gay marriage. They seem to have progressed far past the “but it’s icky” argument that lies at the heart of so many violations of the harm principle, even if, upon further inspection, they collapse back into the old “yuck” factor.
One such argument that is interesting to us in particular is the kind that George Weigel made today (Monday) in the National Review. He argues that the legalization of gay marriage represents an expansion of state power, and that Libertarians ought to oppose this governmental “imposition” of a “relativistic ethic”
Read the full article here
Let’s take a look at a few of his critical arguments:
“Gay marriage” in fact represents a vast expansion of state power: In this instance, the state of New York is declaring that it has the competence to redefine a basic human institution in order to satisfy the demands of an interest group looking for the kind of social acceptance that putatively comes from legal recognition.
New York did not really redefine marriage. Rather, New York came one step closer to admitting that it cannot define marriage at all. The libertarian position on marriage should be the same as the libertarian position on any other contract: the state may (should) enforce a contract, but it should not dictate the terms of that contract. When a state broadens its allowance for what types of contracts may be made, it is a step in the right direction. By eliminating a requirement in the terms of the contract (that the parties engaging therein must be of opposing sexes), the state does not expand its power, but contracts it. It has eliminated its own power to demand that marriage be heterosexual.
For if the state in fact has the competence, or authority, to declare that Adam and Steve, or Eve and Evelyn, are married, and has the related authority to compel others to recognize such marriages as the equivalent of what we have known as marriage for millennia, then why stop at marriage between two men or two women? Why not polyamory or polygamy? Why can’t any combination of men and women sharing financial resources and body parts declare itself a marriage, and then demand from the state a redress of its grievances and legal recognition of it as a family?
Excellent question! Why not, indeed? Weigel seems to consider the implications of three people declaring themselves a marriage to be so obviously devastating that his point has been made without further explanation. Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems pretty harmless to me.
There is a curious rhetorical fact that has usually gone unremarked in these debates, but which is worth pointing out. That what the New York state legislature approved has to be described, not as marriage, but as “gay marriage” or “same-sex marriage” is itself a verbal indicator that what is being done here is counterintuitive. We all know, or thought we knew, what marriage is, and to add the qualifier “gay” or “same-sex” is a tacit admission by the proponents of the practice that it requires an appeal to authority to enforce what seems strange, odd, not right. The verbal tic of “gay marriage” or “same-sex” marriage is thus itself a rhetorical warning sign that what was done in Albany was an exercise in raw state power, the state’s asserting that it can do X simply because it claims that it has the power to do so.
At first I was surprised to see him make such a silly point, but assumed it was only filler — a throwaway line to help him segue to somewhere else. When I saw that he made a full paragraph out of it, I couldn’t believe it. If you’re partial to this argument, try replacing “gay” or “same-sex” with “interracial.” Beyond the frightening willingness to curb individual liberty based on popular lingo, Weigel displays a willingness to make goofy arguments. Any movement that seeks to change the legal status of anything must name that thing, and must name it distinctly from those forms of it which are already legal. I don’t want to spend too much time on this argument — It makes me feel silly.
[R]esistance to the agenda of the gay-marriage lobby is a necessary act of resistance against the dictatorship of relativism, in which coercive state power is used to impose on all of society a relativistic ethic of personal willfulness.
I have never been able to understand how diminishing the legal requirements of contractual relations between consenting adults is “coercive.” Exactly who is being forced to do what? Society at large is being forced to accept something of which they do not approve? Christians are being coerced into accepting the sin of homosexuality? But non-belief in Jesus is a much greater sin, as far as I can tell, and yet I doubt Weigel would have us outlaw disbelief in Jesus. To paraphrase Ron Paul in the South Carolina debate, we allow people to make their own decisions about their faiths — decisions which to many are the absolute most crucial decisions men can make — yet we don’t allow them to decide who to declare to be their spouse? He was talking about drug use, but the argument applies equally to marriage.
Marriage, as both religious and secular thinkers have acknowledged for millennia, is a social institution that is older than the state and that precedes the state. The task of a just state is to recognize and support this older, prior social institution; it is not to attempt its redefinition. To do the latter involves indulging the totalitarian temptation that lurks within all modern states: the temptation to remanufacture reality
Let’s read that again: “the task of a just state is to recognize and support this older, prior social institution.” Wasn’t he supposed to be making the libertarian argument?!? On what bizarre planet do libertarians support the state’s right to recognize and support social institutions? I must have skipped that chapter in Rothbard. Quite frankly, as a libertarian I do not care what religious and secular thinkers have acknowledged for millennia. I care instead about the individual rights of men and women. Men and women have the right to enter into contracts with each other. Those libertarians that believe that the existence of the state is justified (and not all do, mind you) believe that its just role is in the enforcement of contracts (that is by implication, the protection from force or fraud). The minute the government seeks to dictate the terms of that contract, it has exceeded its just bounds. Only then has it “imposed” anything on us.
I hate to presume to understand the motives of people I have never met, but his argument seems so full of holes, contradictions, and twisted language that it is difficult for me not to assume that at his heart, he desperately wants to make the “but it’s icky” argument.
One reason is that the libertarian position on any given issue is very, very easy to divine. Memorize these two words: “privatize it.” The libertarian position on marriage is to privatize it! There is no need to have the government arbitrarily deciding who gets to call their loved one a “spouse” and who gets to call him or her a civilly-recognized-domestic-companion. Couples (even triples, quadruples, and however many nples) need no permission (licenses) from the government and no special benefits either. So even if he doesn’t think a libertarian would support the expansion of the definition of marriage, it can’t be hard to understand that we would not support the existing policies either.
Of course, if the government insists on sticking its nose into wedding chapels, it ought to apply the law equally and not arbitrarily. For this reason, the legalization of gay marriage in New York is a victory for liberty. It isn’t perfect, because the government is still involved where it has no business, but it’s better than the discriminating and uneven marriage policies that Weigel advocates.
