The government in your bedroom

He goes about it in a roundabout way, but I was happy to hear Bob make the case for the privatization of marriage since he is such a strong social conservative:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/06/17/another-peaceful-solution

Obvi I'm for overturning Prop 8 because it writes discrimination into the law, but ideally there would be no law regarding marriage to begin with. Why make a positive right? Why is the government involved?

Just as I'm not happy that Prop 8 put heterosexual marriage in the law, I'm not crazy about explicitly putting gay marriage on the books either. I hope that court precedents can take care of this so we can avoid overlegislating. Doesn't the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment take care of this discrimination? Gay couples should sue for rights and a new norm will form. Couples should be able to add a significant other to their insurance, have them visit them in the hospital, and yes adopt children if they want.

If gay marriage goes into law, I am concerned, like Bob, about the argument that churches' tax exemption could be revoked for discrimination. Call me crazy/old fashioned/whatnot but private organizations should have the right to discriminate! Girls belong in Girl Scouts and boys in Boy Scouts. Sports teams discriminate based on athletic ability. Country clubs discriminate based on income. Colleges discriminate based on academic ability - oh wait now they are forced to enter race, income, and a whole other bevy of socioeconomic factors into the equation. You get the idea.

Why must marriage be a public and federal issue? The government shouldn't be in our bedrooms.

Becoming the Party of Freedom

I've recently come out (hardy har har) about how I feel on the issue of gay marriage and was excited to see another conservative touting the same sentiment over at Big Hollywood:

...gay marriage isn’t a complex issue. Science aside, one needn’t believe that homosexuality is moral in order to understand that nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government the right to regulate marriage.

The Republican Party has made a huge mistake in advocating a kind of Cafeteria Constitutionalism. (I’ll take some guns, no helmet laws, please, a free market, and…yuck, hold the gay marriage!). One can’t legitimately invoke the Constitution to oppose federally mandated sex education, and then use the federal government to impose school prayer. Leave that fair-weather-federalism to the Left.

It’s not a state secret that the Democrat Party has become little more than a loose coalition of special interest groups with few or no coherent philosophical underpinnings. It’s also apparent that the Republicans are equally lost philosophically and couldn’t even manage to nominate a presidential candidate with the fiscal good sense to oppose corporate bailouts. Now here we are: face to face with an opportunity to take stock, recalibrate, and decide what we want from our political leaders.

Me, I implore the Republicans to become — once and for all — the party of freedom. The true moral highground is there to seize. Our Constitution was created as a shield against government encroachment on our personal lives. Conservatives should be the last people who would dare turn this document into a weapon.

To me, pressing a social agenda like this is part of the Republican party's undoing. To be consistent and ultimately successful at the ballot box, we need to always be on the side of liberty.

About those Log Cabin Republicans

I am a Christian, and I support gay rights. For a long time, I tried to abstain from this discussion because of personal beliefs about religion and how a family should be and because I have a lot of gay friends who I love dearly whom I didn't want to offend. I didn't want to admit that while I supported gay rights, I would draw the line at marriage. But I've never felt comfortable with my position and no longer feel like I can hide behind the libertarian excuse of "governments should not be in the business of marriage anyways."

First, we need to put aside our religious beliefs. Last I checked, all Americans seem pretty on board with the whole freedom of religion thing so thus you can't use religious arguments to argue against gay political rights. If you feel really strongly about it and so does your church, nothing has to change for you. Your pastor can choose not to conduct wedding ceremonies for gay couples and you probably won't have many gay congregants as a result. Thus, your daily life will go unchanged.

One of my earliest and most basic political beliefs is a crude reduction of a Lockean principle - "My rights end where yours begin." You may have an objection or even aversion to gay marriage, but your life probably isn't affected by it. Let the people whose lives are being affected lobby for change.

I'm not the biggest fan of Meghan McCain. Let's face it, she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer and it's really just her name and connections that gets her pieces placed, but here she has a point - "A Gayer GOP:"

At the most basic level, sexual orientation should not be a factor in how you are treated. If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past our anti-gay rhetoric. As you can imagine, the road for gay Republicans hasn't been an easy one. Most seem to find the words "homosexual" and "conservative" inherent contradictions, much the same way so many people can’t seem to reconcile fiscal conservatism and the big-tent philosophy of freedom and justice for all. A dear friend of mine who’s both gay and Republican told me, “I find myself constantly being asked how I can reconcile who I am as a person with a party that lately has had such a gay-unfriendly message. Where I stand politically doesn't begin and end with my sexuality. Unfortunately, there is a perception that gays with moderate to conservative views are self-loathing.”

Republicans need to fight the perception that we're close-minded dictators of social morays. Advocating for gay rights could be a huge step in the right direction.

The one thing that concerns me is that as we support minority rights - such as gay rights - I don't think that we need to codify these qualifiers into law. The Declaration of Independence says that "All men are created equal." It doesn't say "all black, white, and yellow men" nor does it say "all men and women" - it just says men. We don't need to muddy the waters by creating new legislation or amending the constitution. Discriminatory laws need to be taken off the books, but I don't believe in mandating positive justice (holla my old h.s. debate days). Writing laws that single out specific groups is more divisive than unifying and creates special interest groups that often outlive their relevancy - hello NAACP! The Constitution protects everyone as is - let's just start living up to it in practice.

Suffice it to say, I love all of my friends gay or straight and believe in a loving, merciful God who is capable of accepting them and any flaws/sins ANY of them have...IF they will accept Him. And furthermore, my fervent hope is that my loved ones may all find a consistent partner to share their lives with. Who am I to judge and who am I to play matchmaker?