Libertarian position on gay marriage

[Jovan Galtic]

Exactly. Similar contract can be signed and executed without government definition of "marriage", like all other contracts.

 

[flynn]

In a libertarian society marriage and incorporation would be two distinctly different institutions. Marriage would be a religious institution where two people come together to bind their immortal souls in the presence of their creator, government would have zero involvement in such an institution. Incorporation, on the other hand, would be a legal union between consenting adults in the eyes of the State. Adults, whether there are 2, 3, or 10 of them could share their lives, homes, bank accounts, etc. and live in communes (forming a type of voluntary communism) if they so choose. A much different would that would be.

Hmmm maybe in a libertarian society marriage would evolve into a per anum contract; such as people could choose different degree of time frame to be married to each other and it'd expire if free people decide to discontinue it.

 

[Ninja Homer]

This is simplistic. When you get married, you become family. That person becomes your next of kin, with all of the legal rights and obligations. You are also creating one household, with legal rights over the productivity of the household and legal recognition and protection of any children within the marriage. Marriage isn't about getting something from the government -- it is about protecting the legal rights over the fruit of your marriage (be that monetary or children) you have as a spouse. Most people here agree that a person has the right to the fruit of his labor. Marriage creates a unique contract in which your spouse also has a right to the fruits of your labor because you agree to work together for the common good of yourselves and your children. Often this will require one or both of the spouses spending part of their time caring for children, household needs, or other things that create value but don't earn money. Also, you each automatically get 100% rights over all children issued from the marriage. This is necessary, but also different than non-married people who usually have only 1 person with primary custody.

Close, but not quite.

You're forgetting about the third party in a marriage license... the state. It isn't just a contract between husband and wife, you're also inviting the state into your bedroom, and they take partial ownership over any fruits of your labor, including any children or inheritance.

For much of this country's history, a marriage license was not required. Laws for handling marriage (inheritance, etc) still existed, but to prove there was a marriage they just had to get records from the church.

After the abolition of slavery, the first marriage license requirements occurred, for interracial couples. A while after that, people called for equality. Instead of becoming equally free to marry, everybody became equally in bed with the government, and everybody was required to get a marriage license. The state never gives up its power once it has it.

Ron Paul is right... get the state out of the marriage business, and let religion handle it like they've done for thousands of years.

 

[Feeding the Abscess]

I'd like to settle the debate by turning it into a First Amendment issue: the right of free speech. Everyone can have his or her definition of what marriage means, and if an agreement or contract is reached by the participants, it will qualify as a civil contract if desired. ...

There should be essentially no limits to the voluntary definition of marriage ...

If others who choose a different definition do not impose their standards on anyone else, they have a First Amendment right to their own definition and access to the courts to arbitrate any civil disputes. ...

It is typical of how government intervention in social issues serves no useful purpose. With a bit more tolerance and a lot less government involvement in our lives, this needless problem and emotionally charged debate could be easily avoided. ...

In economics, licensing is designed by the special interests to suppress competition. Licensing for social reasons reflects the intolerant person's desire to mold other people's behavior to their standard. Both depend on the illegitimate use of government force.

That's way stronger than Obama's limp-wristed approach, and even includes polygamy. Yet Ron Paul is a fascist, anti-gay state's rights crusader and Obama is the savior. For invoking state's rights.

Unreal.

 

[Bohner]

Yep... Marriage is essentially a contract between two consenting parties. The only role government should play is to make sure that the two parties signed the contract in the absence of coercion or fraud, and to enforce it once the terms are agreed upon, and signed on.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

Marriage has been understood throughout the history of civilization as a religious RITE, not a government or civil rights issue. That rite has always specified a man and a woman (NOT merely "two consenting parties") being joined together under God's blessing---which is why the ceremony is described as bringing them together in HOLY matrimony. The couple make their vows to primarily to GOD to stay faithful, and only secondarily to each other. This is why 'gay marriage' is especially unnerving to traditionalists, for it implies God has blessed sexual immorality as holy, when He absolutely has not, and will not. There can be no such thing as "gay marriage" in the religious rite sense, as there can be gay communion, or gay baptisms.

As a matter of contract, individuals are free to sign an agreement that confers benefits and other transferable resources to each other, which in the absence of force or fraud the government has a legitimate power to protect and enforce, but this does not render the arrangement "marriage," or a God-endorsed union. The emphasis put on forcing everyone to accept a gay union as "married," when a non-government solution is available, is precisely an attempt to use the state as an instrument to effect a propaganda victory to confer social approval of gay couples. Or more simply, social liberals imposing their values on social conservatives. This should be opposed when the left tries it on the right, or when the right tries on the left, from an anti-authoritarian perspective.

There is no actual 'right' to be married at all, other than as a form of free exercise of religious liberty, under which the traditional understanding above applies. Once government at any level is involved in marriage, it involves a license, at which point the marriage is not a rights issue at all, but one of government privilege. A license is a privilege the government grants, not a right an individual is born with. And gays are a group, not an individual to whom rights apply. So when supporters demand a 'right' for gays to marry, what they are actually asking is for a government privilege to be extended to another group. This is not a libertarian appeal, but a collectivist one draped in libertarian rhetoric.

 

[ProIndividual]

Government has no business at all in marriage..it's religious issue. Govt doesn't have to sanction or ban marriages for them to exist AT ALL.

 

[ProIndividual]

That rite has always specified a man and a woman (NOT merely "two consenting parties") being joined together under God's blessing

Actually for most of human hisotry marriage was a property arrangement for sale of chattle...women. Most of the history of marriage was dominated by one man marrying many women. They were nothing but property. This is the REAL history of marriage, not the revisionist nonsense religious people like to fantasize about. Marriage is neither monogamous nor voluntary for most of its history.

What is required to prevent two people from getting married today is TYRANNY. Force. Aggression via the state. Statism!

If you can find a preacher/imam/rabbi/whatever to marry you, you should be free to be married w/o state tyranny stopping it. Even if the church worships a toaster oven, and married 5 people to each other, that is legitmate because they are all adults and consent. It takes tyranny to prevent it.

Libertarian 101.

There can be no such thing as "gay marriage" in the religious rite sense, as there can be gay communion, or gay baptisms.

Says you and your interpretation of a myth book.

 

[Ranger29860]

In a libertarian society marriage and incorporation would be two distinctly different institutions. Marriage would be a religious institution where two people come together to bind their immortal souls in the presence of their creator, government would have zero involvement in such an institution. Incorporation, on the other hand, would be a legal union between consenting adults in the eyes of the State. Adults, whether there are 2, 3, or 10 of them could share their lives, homes, bank accounts, etc. and live in communes (forming a type of voluntary communism) if they so choose. A much different world that would be.

BINGO!

 

[Peace&Freedom]

Actually for most of human hisotry marriage was a property arrangement for sale of chattle...women. Most of the history of marriage was dominated by one man marrying many women. They were nothing but property. This is the REAL history of marriage, not the revisionist nonsense religious people like to fantasize about. Marriage is neither monogamous nor voluntary for most of its history.

What is required to prevent two people from getting married today is TYRANNY. Force. Aggression via the state. Statism!

If you can find a preacher/imam/rabbi/whatever to marry you, you should be free to be married w/o state tyranny stopping it. Even if the church worships a toaster oven, and married 5 people to each other, that is legitmate because they are all adults and consent. It takes tyranny to prevent it.

Libertarian 101.

Your rant is secularist social liberalism using libertarian rhetoric 101, exhibit A. It takes tyranny AND coercive revisionism on your part to use court decrees and other state instruments to impose acceptance of gay marriage upon a society full of adults who do not consent to it. If adulterers politically mobilized to get the government to make adulterous couples get treated by all the same as married couples, the result would be just as absurd. In fact, it is their exact point to so impose, when non-state contractual methods of getting the union benefits exist, since what they really desire is the moral legitimacy conferred by the term marriage. When the social left does this it is being authoritarian, period.

 

[tod evans]

I'm not capable of speaking for anyone but myself.

I don't care if homos want to marry, what I care about is the government imposing financial liability on me or my kids for anybodies marriage hetro or homo.

 

[farreri]

I don't care if homos want to marry

Apparently you don't care if you sound homophobic either.

 

[tod evans]

Apparently you don't care if you sound homophobic either.

Nope, don't care what your opinion of me is.

I'm not politically correct and proud of it.

 

[fisharmor]

Apparently you don't care if you sound homophobic either.

How can he be homophobic for referring to them as homos?
You've created a syntactic PC black hole that threatens to suck your brain into it.

 

[fisharmor]

Clearly you do not work in law, as the government regulates almost all important contracts. Laws governing different types of contracts are essential for society to work and to preserve equality before the law.

Why is this opinion showing up so regularly on RPF these days?

Because the state is improperly involved in thing B, partially related thing A requires state involvement.

Not quite QED, folks.

 

[tod evans]

How can he be homophobic for referring to them as homos?
You've created a syntactic PC black hole that threatens to suck your brain into it.

Hell, I could be hetrophobic too?

 

[VBRonPaulFan]

you don't need the govt to recognize marriage for insurance companies, families, hospitals, etc to/to not recognize it. some companies/hospitals would recognize civil unions, some wouldn't. what's the big deal? you get the freedom to choose the places that cater to you. the libertarian position to marriage is 'i don't fuck with you, don't fuck with me'. ie - go ahead and marry whomever you want, and i'll marry whomever i want. but don't try to push your beliefs on marriage onto me.

 

[jmdrake]

Hey guys, need some liberty related help. I posted something on facebook about how we should privatize marriage and was left this comment

But unfortunately two people need the government to recognize their relationship for insurance, hospital, and family reasons. It's awesome that Obama has evolved his view. I do like Ron Paul, but a recognized legal marriage is more important than the credit he is giving it.

Any good ideas on how to respond?

Your personal relationships should not depend on who you are sleeping with. I'll take each issue one at a time.

1) Insurance - You can put anyone on your car insurance you want for an additional fee. The same should be true for your health insurance. The problem is that FDR froze wages and gave tax incentives for health insurance to employers, making it a "group benefit" instead of an individual benefit. Change the tax code (or better yet get rid of the income tax altogether) and this issue goes away.

2) Hospital - All 50 states recognize by law durable powers of attorney for healthcare. Hospitals must allow anyone with a DPOAH to visit the person in the hospital that they hold the DPOAH for and to make medical decisions for that person. People who claim otherwise are ignorant or just lying. I took a family law class for a professor who was stridently pro gay marriage. She brought up the hospital visitation issue. I asked about a power of attorney for healthcare. She said I was right, but it just had to be a durable power of attorney for healthcare. I wonder if I hadn't brought this up if she would have let the rest of the class remain in the dark about this?

3) Family reasons - I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean. But states that don't recognize gay marriage already put gays in the same "child support" slavery system as they put straights in. Gays can also get alimony if they contract for it when the relationship begins.

Really, the whole gay marriage "issue" is a distraction. Gays can get married. That marriage is just not recognized by the state. But just about any legitimate "right" that comes from marriage can be gained by contract. In contrast polygamists get arrested for even pretending to get married. Why is nobody speaking up for them?

 

[Feeding the Abscess]

you don't need the govt to recognize marriage for insurance companies, families, hospitals, etc to/to not recognize it. some companies/hospitals would recognize civil unions, some wouldn't. what's the big deal? you get the freedom to choose the places that cater to you. the libertarian position to marriage is 'i don't fuck with you, don't fuck with me'. ie - go ahead and marry whomever you want, and i'll marry whomever i want. but don't try to push your beliefs on marriage onto me.

Problem is, hetero marriage is pushed on everyone (non-hetero couples, polyamorous relationships and single individuals of all stripes), so that doesn't really fly. There are two logical outcomes: everyone wanting to enter a contract can get government goodies, or nobody wanting to enter a contract can get goodies. Sure, first option still involves theft, and it shouldn't be your bargaining position, but it's better than being both immoral and granting rights to groups.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Government has no business at all in marriage..it's religious issue. Govt doesn't have to sanction or ban marriages for them to exist AT ALL.

This^^ Marriage (in the strictest sense) is a religious covenant, not a legal contract. It's true that people have used it to determine inheritance rights and so on, but that doesn't change the nature of the covenant-it's just stuff governments have added along the way. It seems more rational to separate the legal and religious aspects of marriage to me.