NY passes gay marriage

[Southron]

They need the "blessings of the state" because of all the rights that special contract grants that they can't get otherwise. If you want to ban marriage, work out a preferable alternative, and then campaign for that.

Ban marriage? How about ban marriage licenses? I don't think we should encourage marriage by offering benefits. That just contributes to the divorce rate.

 

[madfoot]

Ban marriage? How about ban marriage licenses? I don't think we should encourage marriage by offering benefits. That just contributes to the divorce rate.

Literally is against hospital visitation rights.

 

[Rothbardian Girl]

Here's a good article for some of you to read.

New York is No Hero
Posted by David S. D'Amato on Jun 26, 2011
http://c4ss.org/content/7598

“New York,” reports BBC News, “has become the sixth and most populous US state to allow same-sex marriage.” After the bill passed the New York legislature, the state’s Governor Andrew Cuomo made the bill law with his signature, prompting local Catholic bishops to describe the law as an attempt to “redefine [the] cornerstones of civilization.”

New York’s new law reignites the contentious issue of same-sex marriage and provides an occasion to reconsider some of the arguments of both sides. Since the application of the market anarchist prohibition against the use of force may seem to be difficult on this issue, it’s necessary to heed the practical nuances of what “gay marriage” actually means.

Though there has been a significant overlap between them, the two spheres and denotations of “marriage” have always remained discrete as within society. Even before gay marriage was “legalized,” warranting recognition from the state, individual churches, for example, went ahead and settled upon their own practices regarding who could be joined in holy matrimony.

In many ways, then, the controversy over gay marriage in the United States has never been about marriage in and of itself, about whether or not extra-governmental social groups like churches would be allowed to marry same-sex couples. To the extent that the critiques of same-sex marriage fall short of urging for the illegality of strictly religious or social practices, their worries about the “undermining marriage and the family” are red herrings.

No one anywhere close to the mainstream of the marriage debate has ever suggested that something like a commitment ceremony, existing outside the purview of the state, ought to be outlawed. The controversy therefore isn’t so much about marriage — at least not in any holistic sense — as it is about a certain very specific set of legal rights granted by the state.

When considering the issue, we must take great care to preserve in our arguments the distinction between spiritual or religious senses of marriage and “civil marriage,” the important legal benefits that emanate from a marriage license. As a matter of principle, market anarchists would like to free marriage altogether from the coercive clutches of the state, to erase the entire arbitrary, state-created legal framework around wedlock.

Autonomous adults ought to be able to marry or not marry whomever they choose and to enter into whatever kinds of consensual relationships they’re inclined toward without the aggression of the state acting as referee. A question thus arises as to why a market anarchist would advocate for gay marriage instead of against state involvement.

But the two positions aren’t mutually exclusive, and, given the special benefits allowed to married couples, notions of legal fairness — i.e., fairness under the law — require the extension of civil marriage to gays. Ideally, of course, society wouldn’t exist inside of a scaffolding of special privilege that completely weaves marriage into every layer of rules about things like taxes, property and health care rights.

Insofar as society does occupy such a scheme, however, philosophical anarchism does not demand that homosexuals be relegated to second-class citizens. While I have no use for the Constitution or its Equal Protection Clause, a stateless society built on voluntary exchange and cooperation would be, by definition, a society founded on the moral principle of equality.

As long as the state is issuing a legal instrument that entitles its holders to a host of very valuable legal protections and perks, it’s untenable to suggest that gays ought to be denied those rights on the basis of the claim that no one should be accorded them. Market anarchists would not ignore the subtlety of the question before us by insisting that any lengthening of the state’s reach falls on the wrong side of a bright line rule.

Even assuming that we did insist on such a rule, it isn’t at all clear that denying gays the right to a civil marriage isn’t more statist in that it unfairly encumbers gays with what are actually legal handicaps. The State of New York deserves no applause or adulation for what is has done. Though the state treats it as such, basic human dignity is something we’re born with, not something that rulers give us.

I realize not everyone here is an anarchist, but I think the article presents a compelling case for this law without ascribing any special praises to New York for doing so.

 

[1836]

This issue is boring because the solution is simple. I know plenty of gay people and have nothing against them, but I personally believe gay marriage is wrong. That said, why should anybody care?

Ron Paul is right: get government out of marriage. Unfortunately he does not lay out an exact plan of doing that (or I have not seen one), but I have always figured that if the government simply issued blank civil partnership certificates, that a church or organization or whatnot could put their mark on it as a kind of marriage.

That, or treat everyone as individuals in the tax code and get rid of all government discrimination between couples and individuals, then you really could have voluntary marriage from organizations.

 

[inibo]

treat everyone as individuals in the tax code and get rid of all government discrimination between couples and individuals

^-This

 

[specsaregood]

Literally is against hospital visitation rights.

Well I'm pretty sure that is up to each hospital's own rules, not law. Even then I'm pretty sure a private contract such as power of attorney could guarantee visitation "rights".