The State, Gay Marriage, and "Equal Rights"

This week, the New York State Legislature is expected to vote on whether to legalize gay marriage within the state. Celebrities have, pardon the pun, come out on various different sides of the issue. Most are extremely supportive. However, some are ardently against it, including former New York Giant and Super Bowl hero David Tyree, who said that gay marriage would "be the beginning of our country sliding toward ... anarchy". (Although some of my fellow UConn students in UConn Students for Liberty would say that's a good thing) If you want my brief opinion on what I would do if I were an NY State Senator, see the end of this post. If you want a more in-depth analysis, read on.

In all this debate, one side of the issue never gets mentioned: why have legally sanctioned marriage at all? Is it really right for the government to dictate who can and can't marry eachother? Here's what I propose (and many libertarians share my opinion)


End government-regulated marriage. Allow any group of two (or more, see below for more commentary on this) consenting adults to enter into a legal partnership (which would have a neutral name and would NOT be called "marriage") by filling out a few papers. This would give them all the rights and responsibilities that marriage currently gives, and frankly, you can give most of those to another person who you're not married to by filling out papers anyway.

Then, allow for private marriage ceremonies. These could be religious (as in at a church or other house of worship) or secular. If the Catholic Church doesn't want to sanction same-sex marriage, don't force them to (as NYS would reportedly attempt to do). Gay couples can go to another church/religious entity, or opt for the secular route (see below).

Of course, interfaith couples, athiest couples, or anyone else who doesn't want to be married by a house of worship can opt for a secular route. This would be similar to getting married by a justice of the peace, except that the person performing the ceremony would not be licensed by the state. If the couple wants a mutual friend to officiate the ceremony, they can do so. The marriage ceremony itself would have no impact in the legal sense (as only the document I discussed above would create the legal partnership), so it wouldn't matter who performed it.

This way, the religious individuals who feel marriage should be between a man and a woman can join a church who feels the same way, get married in said church, and protect the sanctity of their marriage. However, gay couples would still be entitled to the rights and responsibilities of heterosexual couples, and would be able to get a full marriage ceremony, even if that ceremony had no legal impact. And keep in mind the marriage ceremony itself would have no legal consequence for ANY couples, so it doesn't constitute discrimination.

Above, I mentioned the quote "two OR MORE consenting adults". This is because some people believe in polygamy or polyandry. Most notably, many Mormons believe that a man should have multiple wives. In this case, the man in question could obtain a legal partnership (or whatever we're calling it) with all his wives, while taking into account that certain benefits can generally only be applied to one person. For example, complications might arise with regards to who would be given guardianship of children should the husband die. This could easily be resolved however, by the husband stating who would receive these rights when he fills out the necessary paperwork to create the partnership (or when the children are born, depending on circumstances).

This would also allow for more irregular marriages, such as group marriages or line marriages. I know many groups do not condone these unions and may even consider them immoral, but it is not the government's position to declare them universally wrong. Most religious bodies would likely choose not to sanction these marriages, and that of course is their right. But for those who do choose to engage in these partnerships, they may do so with full rights, responsibilities, and ceremonies presently offered by marriage.

People are debating about whether "marriage equality" must involve gay marriage. However, as a recent Libertarian Party release phrased it, "marriage equality [is] only one step towards ending legal discrimination." To quote the release:

"Marriage equality is not enough, .... I've heard some people express concern that allowing gay marriage would send us down a slippery slope. I hope it does. We should settle for nothing less than a society in which the legal code is wiped clean of references to a person's sexual identity or depends on how many sexual partners they have. It is disgraceful that we grant government officials the power to even examine such things, let alone criminalize any peaceful conduct between consenting adults or punish them with unequal marriage, adoption, tax, or immigration laws."

Therefore, we should outlaw any legal definition of marriage and simply allow any consenting adults to enter into a neutrally-named legal partnership.If they wish to have a private marriage ceremony performed for religious, personal, or any other reasons, they may certainly do so. And if people who don't support gay marriage wish to be married by an entity that also doesn't, they may do so and as such feel that their marriage sanctity has not been violated.

Now, for my opinion on how I would vote as an NYS Senator (as promised above): given the circumstances, I wholeheartedly would support the bill. However, I feel it is only an intermediate step towards truly ending discrimination. If you just skipped down here and don't get that reference, go back up and read the whole article.

A Tale of Metaphorical Frogs

In his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore discusses a metaphor involving a frog. Although Gore attempts to apply it to our perceptions of global warming, I feel it is applicable to our collective perceptions in general. Gore explains that if you drop a frog in a vat of boiling water, it will sense the danger and jump out. However, if you drop a frog in lukewarm water and slowly bring it to a boil, it will not sense the danger and will stay in the scalding water until, as Gore said "it is rescued".

Whether global warming is as legitimate as AIT presents is beyond the scope of this article. However, this metaphorical frog example can be applied to many situations which this country has experienced over the past few years.

• First, in the name of "national security", we were subject to moderately enhanced security at the airport. Then, there were "random" additional searches. Then, after the shoe bomber, we had to remove our shoes. Now, we have the full body scanners and "enhanced pat-downs" and before you know it, we'll have to go through security in the nude. Although the good news about that, as the Capitol Steps put it, is that "it will count as an MRI under Obamacare... Which means there will be a $15 co-pay". Like the frog, we failed to sense gradual change, and now it has become a ridiculous invasion of our privacy.
• As I discussed in my last post, we have seen gradual invasions through the PATRIOT Act. Whether it's wiretapping, the infamous library card provision, or many other massive invasions of our rights, we once again, failed to sense gradual change.
• Congressional spending. The deficit and debt are constantly rising, and we will soon pass our debt limit. But what will Congress do? They will just raise the debt cap. We need to CUT spending. The "historic" proposed spending cuts of 1.6% are a joke. We currently spend nearly as much on defense as every other country combined. Who are we afraid of? Not to mention the massive wastes that are the War on Drugs, the enforcement of educational provisions such as No Child Left Behind (which, like the PATRIOT Act, has continuously proven to defy its name), overpaid federal employees, wasteful programs like Medicaid and Social Security, and subsidies to many groups who don't deserve it. We need far more than a 1.6% cut. And we're still going to run a deficit. A massive one. We fail to see the gradual changes that the government is making in this financial situation, and things will get out of hand. In fact, they already have.  In 2009, when the British pound was in crisis, the prize money for the prestigious Wimbledon Tennis Tournament went up 13% from the previous year in pounds yet decreased by 17% in dollars. Since the "D-Day" for the debt cap is August 2nd, about four weeks before the start of the U.S. Open in Queens, we could potentially see the reverse happen in America's Grand Slam this year - prize money going up in dollars yet down in pounds/Euros/other currencies. But that's a topic for another post.

We as Americans and global citizens need to sense these gradual changes which are being thrust upon us. They will (and continue to) escalate out of control. Just as in Gore's example, global warming will spiral out of control (the truth of this claim is debatable but irrelevant), the invasions of privacy and fiscal irresponsibility that our government has demonstrated on multiple occasions continue to spiral in a doom direction.

The Painful Irony of the PATRIOT Act

Yesterday evening, Congress extended the PATRIOT Act to 2015 and President Obama signed it (sort of). But why? Supposedly it is to protect our rights and freedoms from being taken away. This is a very noble cause, indeed. In fact, I completely agree that nobody should be able to take away our freedoms. That's right, NOBODY. Not even the American government.

So why does the government continue violating our First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment Rights all in the name of "protecting our freedoms"? That, my friends, is a prime example of what we call "irony".

Ryan Safner, who graduated UConn earlier this month and was in UConn Students for Liberty with me for the past few months before that, expressed his opinion (and mine) quite brilliantly on his blog.

So Osama bin Laden is dead.  After 10 years, 2 wars, 919,967 deaths, and $1,188,263,000,000 spent, we managed to kill one man. Does this mean we can finally ... remove the full-body scanners and patdowns at our airports [and] restore our civil liberties stolen through warrantless wiretapping, illegal indefinite detentions, and torture?

And that was before Congress renewed this atrocious and unconstitutional Act. If we don't want the terrorists to take away our rights and freedoms, we should hold our own government to the same standard. Congress should never have extended this atrocity, and it should be repealed, or, barring that, declared unconstitutional.

There is no excuse to let this behavior by the federal government continue. It's common sense - in your attempt to prevent other people from committing a certain act, you should not commit said act yourself. It defeats the purpose of your efforts. I'd chalk this up to the Law of Unintended Consequences, but the government clearly knows what it's doing. And once you understand what the consequences of your actions are, it ceases to become "unintended". If we don't like our freedoms taken away, we should deal with the government first, not the terrorists. Repeal the PATRIOT Act, because it is anything but patriotic.