Same Sex Marriage

This week we have been treated to what some people will label an advancement in civil society; namely, California's Supreme Court lifting the state-wide ban on same-sex marriages. Interviews were conducted, photos were taken (none too risque, of course), and men married men, women married women. Indeed, these past few days have been portrayed as a celebration of the newfound "freedom" within California homosexual communities, with advocates for homosexual rights touting the court's decision as a "victory" for the heretofore suppressed people.

But can freedom be legislated? In other words, can the same state that once suppressed you assuage years of personal anguish with one strike of the gavel?

The way I see it, it is foolish for homosexuals to tout their right to marry as a "victory" over the state. After all, in order to achieve their victory, homosexuals had to go through the same state they "defeated" in order to gain the right to marry! I don't know about you, but that sounds like charades to me. While I hold no ill will towards anyone desiring to marry the person, object, etc. of their choice, I bristle at the notion that the California Supreme Court's decision is a "victory" for anybody but the state. If anything, the California Supreme Court has re-affirmed the role of the state as grand arbiter in what should be a free society.

We obtain freedom by virtue of being human, not from any non-entity such as a court, government mandate, or written document. A common misunderstanding is that we obtain our freedom from our Constitution, but the Founders understood that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

For the record, inalienable rights apply to non-Americans, too, which underscores the absurdity of the outrage over Guantanamo Bay detainees demand for the right to petition civilian courts for a writ of Habeas Corpus. That pundits (from the Constitution-loving "conservative" side, no less) continue to make the argument that the "liberal" court is somehow undermining our benevolent Commander in Chief during a time of war only underscores how far the "conservative" mind has regressed.

Such is the same with the same sex marriage advocates. Like the conservative pundit bemoaning the loss of security at the hands of a liberal court, the same sex marriage advocates' celebration of a court's decision to "free" them from oppression completely misunderstands the larger issue at stake: human subservience to an arbitrary body's (government's) decision on whether or not a particular group of people (homosexuals or detainees) merit freedom. Whether the issue is Habeas Corpus or the right to marry, both groups have to go through government to validate their claim. Regardless of the government's decision, the government has already won - both parties have affirmed their vassal position before the issue is considered.

If marriage is a contract between two (or more) parties and their god (assuming the parties have a belief in a higher being), then what right does the government possess that allows it to interfere? The answer is simple: the right granted--implicitly or explicitly--by the parties involved in the contract itself. In other words, the only reason government can involve itself in a private contract between two parties is because the parties involved allowed it to happen.

In a free society, marriage would be based on private property rights. The decision of whether or not two parties can marry would be made by the institution conducting the ceremony, not granted by an arbitrary government bureau. An institution that disapproves of the preferences of the parties seeking marriage would be free to refuse services to those persons. While that means some homosexual marriages would not be allowed at some institutions, it also means that other institutions would be free to perform marriage rights ceremonies for homosexual couples without fear of government interference. The beauty of a free society based on private property rights is that it allows everyone equal opportunity to pursue their own rational self-interest without having to resort to an arbitrary government body for approval beforehand. No government mandate, license, or law has ever come close to ensuring equal rights for everyone without violating the rights of other individuals in the process.

The real winner this week is the government, not homosexuals seeking the right to marry. As long as individuals divorce (bad pun) themselves from their inalienable right to freedom, the government is all-too-happy to fill the void as freedom arbiter. Government-mandated freedom is false freedom, for as the saying goes, "what the government giveth, the government surely can taketh away."