A Libertarian Argument AGAINST 'Gay Marriage': New Touchstone

Although he does not point this out explicitly, Douglas Farrow, author of Nation of Bastards, in his new article in the January/February 2012 issue of Touchstone (which is going to press later this week), sets out an argument that should give libertarians who support 'gay marriage' great pause, if they are truly against government meddling in private affairs: 

He writes:

In Rerum Novarum Leo XIII rightly described the family as “a society very small ... but none the less a true society, and one older than any State,” with “rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State.”  This society, “founded more immediately in nature,” is what the Universal Declaration has in mind when it speaks in article 16 of the family.  The family’s status as “natural” – that controversial adjective is deployed only in this one specific article – allows it a certain priority over civil society and the state.  The latter share an obligation to protect the family, but the family is not at their disposal.

Same-sex marriage dispenses with all of that, however.  By excising sexual difference, with its generative power, it deprives itself of any direct connection to nature.  The unit it creates rests on human choice, as does that created by marriage.  But whether monogamous, polygamous, or polyamorous, it is a closed unit that reduces to human choice, rather than engaging choice with nature; and its lack of a generative dimension means that it cannot be construed as a fundamental building block. 

Institutionally, then, it is nothing more than a legal construct.  It roots run no deeper than positive law.  It therefore cannot present itself to the state as the bearer of independent rights and responsibilities, as older or more basic than the state itself.  Indeed, it is a creature of the state, generated by the state’s assumption of the power of invention or re-definition.  Which changes everything.  

This has been my point: 'Gay marriage' is an invention of the government, with no basis in the nature of any society or family. It is an imposition, which libertarians general oppose. Now inventions by governments such as inventing traffic laws, "rules of the road" are fine. They can invent "corporations" or other entities. But by mandating that an invention be regarded as equal to something that already existed, and that is more fundamental to human society than the organ mandating it, the government greatly oversteps its bounds. What might be invented next that will undermine natural rights that exist prior to the state? Or shall me make the state all-powerful is this regard? What is says is what must be?

I urge you to SUBSCRIBE to Touchstone TODAY--this is last day for being included in the mailing of the January/February issue hot of the press later this month. You will get Farrow's article, plus two articles by Anthony Esolen, one by Robert P. George, a superb feature on the Christian Humanism of Marshall McLuhan, a news series on Christian Art by Mary Podles, "Marriage Made by Heaven" by Miguel A. Endara, "Man Up, Ladies Down" by Perry Glanzer, Jack London on Moral Absolute Zero, and much much more. SUBSCRIBE HERE.

Comments

[sdf]

Bosh. The fictional libertarian individual is also a creation of the State and cannot exist without the State's constant intervention. Libertarians are disingenuous at best when making these kinds of arguments. Better to just drop their heretical anthropology and rejoin the Church.

[James Bradshaw]

This is the "we've always done it this way!" argument.

Look, most men are heterosexual. As such, they've modified the notion of civil marriage to coincide with the cultural understanding of those relationships. In the Old Testament, tribal loyalty was importance, and thus, levirate marriage required men to marry their deceased brother's widow (unless they wished her to spit in his face and take one of his shoes). Female sexual honor had a profound cultural importance as well, which is why a rapist was required to marry the woman he raped (whatever her opinion was on the matter)- Deut 22:28-30. Arranged marriages were common in many cultures (as was polygamy). Both are still around in some places.

Shoot ahead to the colonial era. Women were little more than chattel, which is why signing a marriage contract rendered them unable to sign a contract of any other sort so long as they remained married (coverture laws). The notion of marital rape wasn't even around until the 60s or 70s.

Today, our post-enlightenment standards find women to be "partners". As such, there's almost nothing distinguishing the role of the woman from the role of the man in our current laws. It's just "he" and "she". Even the word "obey" has been stricken from the marital vows.

You act as if there's been some constant in marriage throughout the centuries. There isn't, really. It's just been a widely varying set of contractual arrangements that have evolved to along with man's appreciation for "the other" in his life.

In any rate, gay marriage is actually a conservative idea. It looks at reality as it is (the fact that gay people exist) while encouraging a direction of that reality in a way that benefits the people involved as well as society as a whole. Do you really believe it's better for gay men to live a life of secrecy and anonymous sex (a la Ted Haggard) or like those couples who are out in the open but monogamous and committed?

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

Well. If gay marriage is a conservative idea, then God is a liberal.

[Ken]

Take out the word gay, I believe he means homosexual, and put in any other sexual deviancy and tell me if his argument still holds.

In addition, I'd wager that a good portion of the homosexual "marriages" have hardly been monogamous, similar to a many of hetero marriages.

[Rev Dave]

Mr. Bradshaw writes: "You act as if there's been some constant in marriage throughout the centuries." There has been. All of the "widely varying set of contractual arrangements," as he describes them, until the most recent moment in time, had to do with relationships between men and women. This is so patently obvious that it is overlooked (ignored?) by those who make the banal 'mores have changed over time so we can change them as we please' argument for same sex marriage.

[usmalesf.blogspot.com]

I tried twice to comment on your earlier post re samesex marriage and assumed that my lack of success meant that my opinions were unwelcome. Mr Bradshaw's presence here indicates that it was something technical rather than ideological. So, here goes.

I am a happily "gay" man of conservative political attitudes and a great appreciation for orthodox Christianity's role in Western civilization, to which I am greatly attached. I am not a fan of gay marriage.

My first two reasons are 1. a conservative sense that this bedrock institution is already under enough stress (no-fault divorce and feminism being some of those pressure points) that further fiddling with it is very unwise and 2. a judgment that if you make the gender of spouses irrelevant, there is no real political (as opposed to ideal) ground on which to oppose making the number of spouses equally optional. This would give aid and comfort to the alien and destabilizing --to say nothing of homophobic-- religion of Islam. Not in my interest.

My third reason is based on my (conservative) agreement with you that marriage has an identifiable meaning. While its contractual forms vary and while there are exceptions to its shape (infertile couples), it is manifestly a serious public bond between opposite-sexed people who are assumed/expected to make children.

Consequently, two men's attachment to each other as unique companions/lovers is not properly honored by trying to fit it into an institution which is created precisely out of conjoining irreducibly different male and female humans. To put it bluntly, gay marriage is a kind of straight drag.

I would be very happy to have seen a movement for some kind of civil union that would grant a separate legal status for samesex couples.