Gay marriage

So I was listening to "All Things Considered", and I heard a story about the Italian parliament voting to grant rights to non-married -- including homosexual -- couples, and the local cardinal there warning that such would cause great harm to society and blah blah mani mani bozhe moy. I think my stance on such a warning should be obvious, but the story led me to think again on the whole notion of gay marriage, marriage in general, and the "rights" thereto appertaining.

Marriage, like any personal association, is a matter between and among the participants, and not a matter for state regulation or approval. There is an exception, of course, that applies strictly to those individuals who cannot render informed consent or the contextual equivalent: minors, who cannot consent to sexual intercourse, cannot be held to a marriage contract either. One might also argue that the mentally incompetent also cannot be held to marriage, but consenting adults have the rigtht to do anything that does not violate the sovereignty of another individual. That means there should be no marriage licenses, and the whole issue of gay marriage, or polygamy, for that matter is irrelevant.

I know what advocates of homosexual marriage really want, and they can't have it. It's the right to have everyone think their sexual preference is okay, and nobody has the right of approval. Most of the things they could get from marriage, after all, they can already do: limited and special powers of attorney, name change, etc., are accessible to anybody. It means that a homosexual "spouse" would have to carry these documents with him or her, but the force of law would then be on his or her (and his or her partner's) side for things like hospital visitation and approval of medical procedures, financial decisions, and other considerations that could be covered in a power of attorney.

There are other things, things considered rights: employee, insurance, and government dependent and survivor benefits, the married income tax filing status, for example. Private individuals can choose whether or not to offer dependent benefits to anyone the employee designates as such, and in many cases this already happens. Dependency is a legal relationship, after all: in taxes, it refers to someone for whom somebody else provides a sufficiently large percentage of his or her living expenses. It gets a little trickier, I guess, when both members of a married couple work, and they pick from among each employer's benefit categories, each declaring the other to be a dependent for purposes of life, health, dental, or vision benefits. The point, however, is that the private sector is already making allowances for non-"traditional" couples. The government must go the rest of the way by doing the following: eliminating the married income tax filing status and taxing each individual as an individual -- or better yet, eliminating the personal income tax entirely; allowing the individual to define his or her beneficiaries or dependents without regard to familial or marital relationship -- or, better yet, eliminating Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.

There is also, finally, the issue of children, and adoption thereof by homosexual couples. I don't want to get into the statistics, but the bottom line is that homosexual partners as a group are better fit to rear children than heterosexual couples: considering all the abuse, neglect, incest, etc. that is documented in "traditional" families, and considering the education and employment status of the homosexual couples seeking to adopt. There's no evidence that a heterosexual child can be made homosexual by his or her parents, any more than homosexual individuals have been made heterosexual by theirs. If anybody wants to, of course, we can get into this, but I'll conclude that a homosexual couple, or a polygamous or communal group, are just as capable of providing the love, instruction, food, shelter, clothing, et al. as a traditional married couple -- or a suitably motivated single parent.

So the answer is really to get government, all layers of government, out of marriage and interpersonal relationships. Individuals define their own marriages, and gain the approval of other individuals who love and respect them. Neither is the role of the state.

So again, anyone who supported the "defense of marriage" act or propound the marriage definition amendment is a subhuman anti-American.

Intermission: the virtue of inaction

I realize that one of the biggest difficulties with accepting the Libertarian position is exemplified by Congress' action in the wake of Katrina: throwing money around to look like it's doing something, like its members care and what-not. In a broader, more general sense, every argument against Libertarian positions on the size and scope of government ends up being just another variation of the imperative, "We have to do something."

So I thought I would pause here, before giving my own take on Katrina, to make a simple point. That being, when two possible courses of action are likely to have the same outcome, one ought to choose the one that is least costly; in effort, time, and resources. And when an action is unlikely to change the outcome from that which inaction would yield, inaction is the least costly action.

This is especially true in that government cannot do anything without taking money from you and me. So if Congress votes to spend >$60 billion, it's making every taxpaying citizen in the United States give $200-300 -- including those who have lost their jobs and homes from Katrina. All so the legislators can look generous, compassionate, and effective. Whatever I have given or shall give to aid the relief effort, I know that, come April, I shall pay still more, because the Federal budget shall have to be replenished.

Therefore, please remember to ask that simple question whenever a government official promises to "do something" about a problem: is action by the government going to be any more effective in solving that problem than government inaction? Not "doing something" about the problem: actually solving it. If more voters -- and better still, more elected officials -- would ask this question, our taxes would be lower, we would have less intrusion in our lives from the state, and, well, some individuals who are dead would not have died.