martybegan
Diamond Member
- Apr 5, 2010
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Interesting article in the Federalist:
Stop Calling It Marriage Equality
Some quotes:
Stop Calling It Marriage Equality
Some quotes:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), an institution that has vigorously opposed gay marriage for some time now, conceded that the political battle over marriage is over. “As far as the civil law is concerned,” the Mormon Church admitted, “the courts have spoken.”
Personally, I don’t have any misgivings about same-sex marriage, mostly because I don’t believe it destabilizes society or family—although I suspect it will offer gay Americans far more stability. The policy debate is about over, anyway. These days, we should be more troubled by the persistent need to coerce and demean those who hold religious objections to gay unions into compliance. And if I were, say, a practicing Catholic, I could never accept that the sacrament of marriage could be redefined by judges, democracy, or anyone other than the Big Guy. This is neither homophobic nor does it undermine your happiness. In my small “l” libertarian utopia, people are free to enter into voluntary arrangements and others are free to believe that the participants of these arrangements may lead to eternal damnation.
The polygamy argument offends many gay-marriage advocates, who view it as an unfair and unnecessary distraction. But I’m not offering Santorum-style slippery slope arguments here. I don’t believe polygamy will be legalized. My sense is that the vast majority of Americans have little interest in shacking up with their sisters or entering into a ménage à trois (well, in its literal meaning, “a household of three,” at least). Rather, I’m asking on what logical grounds can a person argue that gay marriage is okay but polygamy is not—or any other type of marriage? If your answer is an arbitrary declaration like “the ideal union is between only two individuals” then all you’ve done is redefine the parameters of marriage. You support gay marriage, not “marriage equality.”