Rand Paul: On gay marriage, GOP needs to "agree to disagree"

[mit26chell]

I don't understand why this is such a big issue. I can't think of a bigger matter that pertains to liberty - just leave people alone. Gay people aren't fighting the bigoted laws in this country to try and force their definition of marriage on anyone else, they're fighting to simply be treated the same way under the law as straight couples are.

Regardless of whether you think being born gay is immoral, gay people are citizens of this country who are supposed to have the same constitutional rights as our straight counterparts- by that standard alone, the government is fully obligated to treat them as equal which means yes, gay people can enjoy the same benefits of marriage (the civil institution) that straights do.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

I don't understand why this is such a big issue. I can't think of a bigger matter that pertains to liberty - just leave people alone. Gay people aren't fighting the bigoted laws in this country to try and force their definition of marriage on anyone else, they're fighting to simply be treated the same way under the law as straight couples are.

Regardless of whether you think being born gay is immoral, gay people are citizens of this country who are supposed to have the same constitutional rights as our straight counterparts- by that standard alone, the government is fully obligated to treat them as equal which means yes, gay people can enjoy the same benefits of marriage (the civil institution) that straights do.

It's a big issue because of disputed and false constructions of the issue, such as the above. We are not all agreed that gays are born that way, or that they are an afflicted civil rights category, or that groups have "constitutional rights" (individuals have rights, groups do not). Those are secular social liberal dogmas, that the social left authoritarians have no more right to impose on others through law, than the right has to impose upon the left. Packing so many of those presumptions into law, or the rhetoric of the issue, is an attempt to change society by legal force, over the objections of the coerced. Laws exist to protect basic individual rights, not to serve as social whips to bully people into accepting normalization of groups.

The benefits (government privileges) gays speak of expanding to themselves can be secured through civil unions or private contracts. By confrontationally insisting that the arrangements be called 'marriage' they clearly are going beyond the civil institution, and are really after social legitimacy or approval, derived from the history of the term as a religious institution. Historically, marriage is a God blessed union (which is why it is done in a religious ceremony). But sexual immorality is not holy behavior. Traditionalists realize the phrase "gay marriage" is supposed to make them acknowledge unions based on homosexuality as a holy or God-blessed arrangement. This is why their push back has been so heated.