I’m with Anthony Gregory (http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/010718.html) and JL Wilson in favor of separation of marriage and state (http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2006/06/separation-of-marriage-and-state.html).
Anthony and James are right, yet again. They set me to thinking whether I am obliged in the interests of avoiding hypocrisy to renounce the benefits that my own District of Columbia marriage license confers on me. Our situation is such that our marriage does not impose much in the way of obligations on unwilling third parties. I can sue anyone who sleeps with my wife for “criminal conversation”, but I don’t think I would ever do that anyway. I get to file my taxes jointly, but this actually costs me money. I get to own my house jointly with the wife, but we could have done this anyway.
We both have jobs and our own health benefits, but I am on the wife’s dental plan. I’m going to say that this couple of hundred bucks is cancelled out by the higher taxes. Moreover, it is conceivable that Mrs Vache Folle’s employers would pay for my cleanings as an inducement for her to stay on board. We don’t have to have wills because it is assumed that we would leave our stuff to each other, but we could make wills and bring about the same result. Other people are obliged to acknowledge our rights to visit one another in prisons or hospitals and to act on one another’s behalf in some cases, but we could arrange for most of these things by power of attorney if need be. So, we don't really get much in the way of state imposed benefits.
Have I rationalized my moral dilemma away sufficiently? I’m going to call it good for now.
Meanwhile, let me relate a conversation I had with a wingnut conspecific of mine:
ME: Why is it important to preserve marriage as it is rather than letting it evolve?
WC: Because marriage is so important to society. It is the basis of society and is a blessing to married people.
ME: Then why shouldn’t gay people be encouraged to marry if marriage is so great?
WC: Because that would undermine the institution of marriage and weaken it.
ME: How is your marriage damaged by a gay couple’s getting married?
WC: My marriage is not going to be damaged at all. It is strong. I’m worried about other people.
ME: What other people?
WC: Poor people are already avoiding marriage and having children out of wedlock at a record rate, and changing marriage will just make the situation worse.
ME: How so?
WC: It just will. Look what happened when divorce was liberalized.
ME: Maybe there was a big pent up demand for divorces and the divorce rate reflects what people want for themselves. Maybe poor people don’t get married sometimes because the marriage product as it is currently offered doesn’t work for them.
WC: People can’t just be allowed to do what they want.
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"It just will. Look what happened when divorce was liberalized."
I wish people would think about what it actually means when someone says this. This conservative is saying, outright, that people should have been forced to spend their lives in misery with someone they don't want to be with, in a continuous violation of one's space and one's body... for the good of 'society'. I challenge any red-baiting conservative to site an instance of forced collectivisation worse in principle that being forced to spend your life with another.
Monsters. It makes me tremble in outrage and fear to remember that vast numbers of our fellow citizens would eliminate these rihts and freedoms in an instant. I don't think most people realise how easily we could slip back to being locked for life in prisons called families.
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