Marriage and Party

There is an interesting post at the American Enterprise Institute on the correlation of the percentage of children raised by their biological parents by state and the correlation with Republican or Democrat states.  It has long been clear that college education results in a higher percentage of children being raised by their biological parents and a higher fraction of the population in the Democrat states has a college education.  It has been clear that having Asian ethnic parents provides the highest parental presence, followed by white parents, Hispanic parents, and finally black parents.  This study adjusted for the effects of college education and parental ethnicity to find that there was some residual positive correlation between Republican states and a greater percentage of children being raised by their biological parents.

This graphic was particularly interesting:

The reddest states, or those most consistently Republican, had the highest percentage of married adults.  The question is this:  Are people more likely to be married because they are Republican voters or they more likely to be Republican voters because they are married?  It is most likely more correct to say that whether someone is married or not is a significant factor in how that person votes.

We know that nearly 60% of self-identified Republicans are married and that two-thirds of unmarried women voted for Obama and Democrat Congressional candidates in the 2012 election (see here).  A majority of married women voted for Romney in 2012 (53% to 46% for Obama).  Overall, Romney won 56% of the married voter vote to Obama's 42%.  So, it is clear that a voter's marriage status significantly influences the party for which a person votes.  As a consequence, it is most likely more correct to say that a higher percentage of children are raised by their biological parents in Republican than in Democrat states because a higher percentage of adults are married in Republican states.

One may question this by noting that since the number of people with college educations is higher in the Democrat or Blue states, then the fact that a college education correlates with a greater likelihood of parents raising their children together may offset the difference in marriage rates.  This is where the adjusted data for education and ethnicity comes in.  The yellow bars show that adjusted data and the adjusted marriage percentages for adults are still higher in the Red states than in the Blue states.  It appears that marriage is more valued in the Republican states than it is in the Democrat states, consistent with the rhetoric of the respective parties.

Marriage can most certainly be of great value to those in a marriage.  It is a partnership that is much more loving and intimate than any other, with huge advantages in security and living efficiency as well.  Some Republicans claim that this makes traditional marriage the cornerstone of society.  In my evaluation, while traditional marriages are clearly extremely important, there is plenty of room for non-traditional marriage concepts to offer many of the same advantages to people who do not satisfy the limitations of the traditional marriage concept.  The advantages of marriage are a right which should be available for everyone to claim with willing adult partners.  This freedom will then make our society even stronger and better for the highly differentiated individuals of which it consists.

Republicans, who often claim they favor more individual freedom, should embrace an enlarged concept of marriage to be consistent with both equal individual rights and their acknowledgement of the many values gained with marriage.  Those values should not be limited to heterosexual couples.  Everyone has a very broad freedom of association which they may exercise in their private sector choices, whether in a business context or in the context of a domestic partnership.

Allow Same-Sex Marriages as a Basic Individual Right

For centuries, most people of the Judeo-Christian tradition have believed that God frowns upon people of the same sex having sexual relationships.  Indeed, for centuries they often thought God demanded that they execute, often very gruesomely, men thought to be having sex with men.  This vision of morality has been transformed for the better, but translated into governments only recognizing opposite sex marriages.  In recent times, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and then Massachusetts came to recognize same-sex marriages.  Today in the United States, the District of Columbia, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont recognize same-sex marriages.  In addition, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin offer either civil unions or domestic partnerships to same-sex couples.  Forty-one states forbid same-sex marriages, including North Carolina which just passed a ban by referendum earlier this year.

The referendum ban of same-sex marriage in California was challenged in federal court and was declared unconstitutional.  This ruling is under appeal and is still working its way through the federal court system.  Washington passed a law authorizing same-sex marriage and Gov. Chris Gregoire signed it earlier this year.  The Maryland legislature also authorized same-sex marriage this year and Gov. Martin O'Malley has signed it into law.  But, referendums to ban same-sex marriage in Washington and Maryland will be on the ballot in November.  Maine, which presently bans same-sex marriages, has a referendum on the November ballot to allow them.  Minnesota, which presently bans same-sex marriage by statute, has a referendum on the November ballot to additionally forbid same-sex marriage in their state constitution.

How does one rationally analyze the role of governments with respect to marriage and with respect to same-sex marriages in particular?  We have to decide what marriage really is and why government has necessary and legitimate functions with respect to marriage.  In the oldest Judeo tradition, marriage was commonly not a domestic partnership between one man and one woman.  Each husband might have several wives.  This was surely not marriage of the nature of those recognized by government in America today.  Early Christians commonly did not marry, since many thought the end of the world was rapidly approaching with the return of Christ.  After that brief period, Christian marriage was often a means of cementing favorable relationships between families, clans, tribes, aristocrats, and even nations.  A young woman was pretty much the property of her father and the father eventually traded her to a man for a degree of allegiance and goodwill in many cases.  She was now her husband's property.  Marriage was not the spiritual union of two people in the way many think it is today.  It was a commercial and political act in many cases.  The church supported this viewpoint of marriage by providing a patina of spirituality, though spiritual connections between the husband and wife were very commonly missing.

Even today, the role of government is not to provide a spiritual content to marriage or even to assess whether such a spiritual basis for a marriage exists.  An honest evaluation of marriage as provided by government license and contract is that every marriage is a domestic partnership and any spiritual meaning to the union is provided by the married partners independent of government.  The domestic partnership that governments offer is a legal contract with legal implications for shared property, procreation and the raising of children, taxes, mandated time off work to care for one another, and permissions to make medical decisions for one another if one partner is unable to make such decisions.

The only case of such issues in which the sex of the partners may make any difference at all is with respect to procreation and the raising of children.  In the modern world, adoptions may easily take the place of procreation, but many married partners also have no children and there is no title of aristocracy demanding an heir.  Should children be adopted in the relatively rare case by two partners of the same sex, there is little reason for one having to be a high-earning man, since many women are now high-earners.  The domestic partnerships that are formed by government marriage licenses are just as appropriate today for partners of the same sex as they are for partners of opposite sexes.

Each and every American adult competent to care for himself has a very broad sovereign right to life, liberty, property, the ownership of his own body, mind, and labor, and the pursuit of his own happiness.  Legitimate government cannot violate that broad range of fundamental individual rights.  There must be a strong presumption against laws that limit the exercise of personal actions which do not do harm to others.  Legitimate government does not interfere with the association of one adult with other consenting adults, unless substantial harm is thereby done to others.  Legitimate and individual rights-protecting government is highly limited and minimal government.  If it acts to place limits on the relationships and associations of individuals, it must have a very substantial reason for such limits and a strong case for the harm those associations or relationships would do to others.  The only way such harm to others occurs is if the partnership uses force to harm others, but there is no new issue here since initiated harm done by force by any individual to others is already prohibited.  There is no more reason to prescribe the number and sex of domestic partners than there is to do so for a business partnership.  Indeed, a domestic partnership is very much like a business partnership in all respects relevant to the role of government.

Not only is there no reason to place a prohibition on same-sex domestic partnerships, but because our individual rights are equal, we cannot limit marriage contracts to only those who desire a single partner of the opposite sex.  While anyone may exercise their own freedom of conscience in the belief that same-sex domestic partnerships are immoral, abhorred by God, or simply biologically uninteresting to them, government and the People whose individual equal rights are to be protected by government cannot make such judgments in the political realm without violating the freedom of conscience of others with a differing viewpoint.  They cannot legitimately use force to prevent others from exercising control over their own bodies and minds, from evaluating and choosing whose most intimate company they desire, and from pursuing their most personal and individual happiness.

Individual human beings are complex and highly differentiated.  We are all different in the way our minds observe reality, analyze and evaluate it, and assess our own relationship to it and to others.  Our biochemistries differ, our senses operate at many different levels, our nervous systems feel differently, our bodies take very different forms, and we respond very differently to other individuals.  Among the most complex and highly differentiated aspects of an individual's nature is his or her sexuality.  We cannot be serious about the individual right to pursue happiness if we have government place obstacles and unequal treatment in the way of individuals whose sexuality is different than that endorsed by a religion or just recent and local tradition.

It is a basic violation of individual rights for government to discriminate against individuals based on their sexuality.  Legitimate government ought to provide same-sex marriage contracts which are equivalent to those it provides to couples of the opposite sex.  It should even provide a more enlarged concept of domestic partnership contracts as broad in terms of the combination of adult individuals bound in the contract as is the case in small business partnerships.  Government commonly interferes with our freedom of association in far too many ways.  It is time that it stop interfering with that broad freedom of association in our domestic partnerships which it is the right of each and every adult individual to claim.

Understanding this, one should vote for Question 6 in Maryland to allow same-sex couples to marry in Maryland.

USDA Makes Heterosexism Ugly

Most of us did not know that heterosexism does not describe those who practice or advocate the desirability of heterosexuality.  No, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Sec.Tom Vilsack, it means the belief that marriage can only be between one man and one woman.

I am trying to figure out where this idea comes from.  Does liberalism mean that only one man and one woman can enjoy the benefits of a liberal society?  Perhaps it does now, when liberalism seems to mean that one great socialist leader and his First Lady will rule the country and choose everyone's values and impose them on everyone using the force of government.  This was not the origin of the term liberalism, however.  Libertarianism still means that one favors liberty for all and conservatism still means one favors many traditional values, so most isms do not have a parallel to this new word heterosexism.

Why is it that sexism does not mean that one believes in the desirability of sex or that one enjoys sex?  No, in our strange new world, sexism means one is biased against those of one sex or another.  In this vane, one would think that heterosexism would mean that one was biased against heterosexual activities.  But no, heterosexists are according to the USDA advocates of heterosexuality.  This would be in keeping with the traditional use of words such as liberalism, socialism, conservatism, and libertarianism, rather than the screwy use of the word sexism.  But, the USDA says that heterosexism is not just in favor of heterosexuality, but that its essence is the denial of marriage to those who are not heterosexual.  I do not know why attitudes toward the marriage rights of others must be wrapped up in this term at all.  This is very strange.

But applying this rule to other words that ought to be of the same family, leads us to the conclusion that homosexism is the denial of marriage rights to those who are not of the same sex.  Bisexism is the denial of marriage rights to those who are heterosexual and to those who are homosexual.

The USDA is re-educating its employees against biases directed at those who are not heterosexual.  Of course, any government agency has no business being biased on the basis of sexuality in its hiring and promotions.  The USDA is going beyond this to attack certain ideas about marriage though.  Given that the U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled that states cannot discriminate in favor of heterosexuality in marriage, it seems a bit premature for the USDA to be framing those who oppose marriage rights for those who are not heterosexual as bigots.  Mind you, I think such people are bigots, but the government's courts and Congressional law have made no such determination.  The Obama administration is all in favor of discriminating against those who believe marriage should be reserved to one man and one woman, however.

Furthermore, the USDA does not make marriage laws, so it is pretty much irrelevant whether some of its employees believe marriage should be limited to one man and one woman.  Any effort to dictate that they cannot think this is an attack on the religious beliefs that many people hold and is as clearly wrong as would be USDA discrimination against the hiring of homosexuals or its attempt to re-educate them to become heterosexual once hired.

This USDA effort is in the context of a diversity and inclusion program.  It is being pushed forward by the Office of Personnel Management as a model for all of the other agencies of the federal government.  It will then be pushed upon the states and upon all government contractors.  In practice, such diversity training and incentives result in managers preferentially hiring and promoting two-fers.  They will be rewarded for hiring or
promoting lesbian women and homosexual Black men, while discriminating against heterosexual white males and even those who are only one-fers, such as heterosexual Black males or white females.  This leads to what ought to be seen as clearly unlawful and immoral discrimination.

To overcome the fact that this is such transparent wrongful behavior, it is useful to actually denigrate the word heterosexual.  It has to be converted into a put-down.  This has been done with white male as in "The Founders were just a bunch of white males, so their work was full of evil and discrimination.  Therefore we can dismiss the Constitution in its entirety, not to mention the Declaration of Independence."  The strangely defined word heterosexism helps to give the word heterosexuality a very negative connotation.  Defining heterosexism as evil and as a denial specifically of marriage rights helps to accomplish this important goal of the Progressive Elitists.

It will be interesting to observe in time if one sense of the meaning of Progressive Elitism becomes the belief that only Progressive Elitists are allowed to marry.  When that starts to happen, will most Americans see that as a new form of bigotry?  Or will they just accept the idea as a return to the aristocracy's natural rights such as they enjoyed in the Dark Ages and Medieval times?  After all, the Progressive Elitist believes most Americans are too stupid to choose their own values and to manage their own lives.  It is clear that they already think of themselves as the educated aristocracy who by right take care of the dumb and uneducated peasants, who should be treated just a little bit better than the pigs.  Maybe.  Many environmentalists and animal rights advocates among the Progressive Elitists believe most of the peasants should not be treated as well as the pigs or the snail darter.

As I have discussed many times, the government ought not to be in the marriage business.  If marriage is a spiritual union of two or more people, then it belongs in the private sector.  Government should only offer domestic partnership contracts and these should no more limit the partners than a small business contract does.  These domestic partnerships should be completely non-discriminatory, so long as the partners are only consenting adults.  See my prior discussions on the right to form domestic partnerships without government discrimination here, here, here, and here.  Marriage or domestic partnerships are surely relationships in which one should be completely free to exercise one's right to the freedom of association.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Enforce

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips, who earlier decided that the military's policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell with respect to people in the military having or being inclined to same-sex sex was unconstitutional, earlier this week ordered the military to stop enforcing that policy.  I discussed her decision on its constitutionality here and expressed my agreement with her decision.  She had given the government time to respond to her decision with a plan to end the policy, which it failed to do.   The Democrats did try to pass legislation in Congress to strike the policy, but despite their overwhelming majority, they could not pass the legislation.  The Republicans, to their shame, largely opposed the legislation, as did numerous Democrats.  So, Judge Phillips has acted to halt enforcement of the policy that Obama and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have said they wanted ended.  Nonetheless, the Justice Department has decided to appeal the decision.

This is one of those Go Figure moments.  The Democrats have long claimed they were the champions of homosexuals, but have not ended this policy in the last nearly two years despite having the Congress and the presidency locked up.  Laws discriminating against same-sex relationships and sexual acts are mostly popular with the People yet, though the discriminatory attitude is very much tied to the older generations.  Mostly religious conservatives favor discrimination.  Because of that, the Republican Party is mostly on-board for such discriminatory acts.  This is one of its grievous faults.  Faced with a disastrous election in a few weeks, many Democrats did not have the nerve to defend the equal rights of homosexuals and bisexuals to their lives, liberty, and pursuit of their happiness.  Judge Phillips gave the Democrats an out, which they should have taken.

It is claimed that when a U.S. District Judge rules a law unconstitutional, the Justice Department must appeal the case, which is what it is doing.  This is nonsense.  The President is sworn to preserve, defend, and protect the Constitution of the United States, which of course the members of Congress are also.  The Justice Department reports to the President and he should have ordered them not to appeal the ruling of Judge Phillips because he is suppose to recognize the excellent argument she made as a correct interpretation of the constitutionality of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  Perhaps, in the now well-established tradition of the Democrat Party, he has not bothered to read her decision.  If he did, he is failing us with his judgment of her argument.  If he did not, he is failing us with his turpitude.  He should be taking his duty to the Constitution more seriously.  Of course, from many things he has said and done, we know that he does not care to actually follow the Constitution since he sees it as being in opposition to many of his socialist policies.  For instance, he faults it for being a roadblock to redistributive policies.

Each of the three branches of the federal government has the obligation to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.  This is not a task given only to one branch.  When any of the three branches fails to exercise its independent judgment, the exercise of our individual rights is harmed.  When Congress considers legislation, it is obliged to consider whether it is constitutional.  If any Congressman thinks it is not, he is obligated to vote against it.  In fact, if he is not sure that it is constitutional, he is obliged to vote against it.  If the President is presented with a proposed law passed by Congress, he is obliged to decide whether it is constitutional or not.  If it is not, he is obliged to veto it.  Because it is the nature of government to try to expand its powers, it should be the practice to recognize that if any of the three branches of government believe a law is unconstitutional, we should be disposed to refusing to allow the force of government to be used to enforce that law.  The bias of the People should be toward limited government and a maximization of the rights of the individual.  If the federal courts rule a law limiting individual freedom of choice unconstitutional, then we have recognized in recent times that the law cannot be enforced.  Unfortunately, we seem to have lost the idea that the Congress and the President are also supposed to be bulwarks against the encroachment of government against our equal, sovereign individual rights as well.  A three-legged foundation is much more stable than a one-legged foundation.

On a related issue, the Justice Department is also wrongheadedly appealing two decisions of a federal judge in Massachusetts that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act federal law is unconstitutional.  The judge ruled that the states, not the federal government, have the power to define marriage.  He also ruled the federal law violated citizens due process rights.  I have never seen any power given to Congress by the Constitution which would allow it to decide who has a valid marriage contract and who does not. 

In actual fact, I believe it very unwise to allow any government to define marriage.  Marriage is a spiritual union of people and there is no way to preserve fundamental freedoms of conscience and the right to pursue happiness if governments are allowed the power to define what constitutes such a spiritual bond.  What they do have within their purview is the job of enforcing domestic partnership contracts, which is done at the state and local government levels, not the federal level.  My views on this are given here, here, here, and here.  Domestic partnerships should no more define and limit the number and sex of partners than does a small business contract.  A single heterosexual couple, gay men, lesbians, bisexual people, multiple heterosexual couples, and polyamorous people should all be allowed the protections and benefits of domestic partnerships suitable to their needs and as agreed upon as free adults.

Miron: Government Needs to Divorce the Marriage Business

Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, has made an argument similar to the one I have been making for about 5 years on the issue of gay marriage and the role of government in marriages.  To summarize his argument:

• Government should exit the marriage business.
• Private contracts for raising children, for the division of property, inheritance, and other purposes should be available as components to a bundled contract open to all couples.
• Opposite-sex and same-sex couples would have the same opportunities and be treated equivalently.
• Government would still define the default rules of a contract.

The main limitation of his argument is that he limits domestic partnership contracts to a couple.  There is no more reason for doing this than there would be to limit a small business partnership to a couple.

Equal Rights in Domestic Partnerships

Robert A. Levy, Chairman of the Cato Institute, and John D. Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress, wrote an interesting article for the 8 June 2010 Washington Post called Marriage Equality for All Couples.  They noted that the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, ended the ban on interracial marriage in the 16 states with laws banning it at the time.  The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man.'"  This decision was based on the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868.  Sadly, it took 99 years for this ruling to finally be made.  At the time of that decision, 74% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriages.  Twenty years ago, only 6.8% of newly married couples said they married outside their race or ethnicity.  That number is now 14.6% according to a recent Pew Research Center study.  Clearly, the earlier prejudice against interracial marriages has subsided and more and more Americans are claiming their equal right to marry, whatever their racial mix may be.

The right of people to marry who are not heterosexual has not yet been given a basis in the federal courts.  In 2003, the American opinion was that only 37% supported same-sex marriages.  A February Washington Post poll found that 47% of Americans now support same-sex marriages.  65% of those ages 18 to 29 support same-sex marriages, so the trend will continue in the direction of increasing support.  Robert Levy and John Podesta are the chairmen of the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is supporting the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger.  This case is aiming to have California's Proposition 8 outlawing same-sex marriages declared a violation of the 14th Amendment and is now before the federal district court in California.  The case is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.  It ought to win the freedom for all couples to enter into equal marriages.

I have long made it clear that government should not be claiming to play a role in marriage at all.  For many, marriage is a spiritual union and I fully understand that concept even though it is not the case that I believe in a god.  There is good reason to reserve the term marriage to meaning a spiritual union and allowing people to control that spiritual content in their marriages without any presumption on the part of government that it has anything to say about that spiritual content.  Those who are religious or who have spiritual values which are not religious are best served by adopting a more appropriate term for the contract that government offers to couples.  It would be better if this were universally called a domestic partnership contract or agreement.  All of the issues which involve government are better described as contractual in nature.  Recognizing this, provides a separation of church and state in marriages/domestic partnerships which would help to diminish the passion of the argument from religious quarters against equal rights in domestic partnership contracts.

As I have written many times also, domestic partnership agreements ought to be a parallel to small business partnerships in that government does not dictate the sex or number of partners.  Two men, or two women, or two men and two women, or any other combination of several people ought to be free to enter into a legal domestic partnership contract.  Joint property, joint responsibility for raising children, the sharing of income, and critical medical decisions and support could readily all be incorporated into such domestic partnership agreements.

Very likely, most families would still be built around one father and one mother, but the huge number of divorces and resulting serial marriages are clear evidence that one-man-one-woman marriages do not work for large numbers of people.  Sometimes the failure is largely the result of two people becoming bored with one another or of one simply yearning for some change of pace.  Sometimes, the couple simply do not always share the same cycle of need for sex.  Sometimes, the strains of earning income, cleaning house, purchasing food and clothes, maintaining the house and cars, agreeing on a common vacation, and raising the children are simply too much for two people.  Some people would do better in larger domestic partnerships in which tasks are spread over more specialists or where they can be varied over time.  With most public schools having severe shortcomings, many such extended family groups would be able to have a member or two specialize in home-schooling the children, while a sufficient number of others remain to bring home the bacon.  One member might be particularly good in managing the family investments, while another is great in playing with the kids and caring for the yard.  One may love to cook, while another loves to work on the cars and keep them running.  Another may like purchasing the groceries, the furniture, and the clothes for the children.

Of course, in many such cases, family members may have the option for having a sexual life enriched by more than one sexual partner.  Sex is one of man's greatest pleasures in life.  It is very important to many people that they are able to optimally enjoy this pleasure.  There is no valid ethical principle that says that it is immoral for a man or a woman to have more than one sexual partner in any period of his or her life.  The ethical issue is whether the person one chooses to have sex with is a person of good character who is of great interest to and highly valued by the chooser.  If someone is fortunate enough to find more than one such person with whom they can form a more intimate bond with shared life-affirming sexual pleasures, people of good will ought to be ready to simply wish them the best.  This is true whether the individuals in the serious and sincere sexual relationship are of different sexes or the same sex.

A knowledge of history makes it very clear that while some people may be entirely heterosexual, very many people are bisexual or homosexual.  When societies are not burdened by severe heterosexual bigotry, it is clear that many people are happy to give outlet to their bisexual or homosexual desires and choose to pursue their happiness in that way.  In our present time, the video market in erotic movies and the rich offering of sexual images and discussions offered on the Internet, make it clear that sex is both of great interest to many people and that their interests are highly varied.  These interests, when given anonymous expression, do not conform to the publicly affirmed principles dominant in our society.  It is clear that many sexual interests are being suppressed, some for good reason, but many for no more reason than traditional prejudice.  It is no one's right to interfere with the exploration, development, and expression of another's optimal sexuality, so long as only consenting adults are involved.

We are all complex and highly differentiated individuals and one of the great expressions of that is in our sexuality.  To suppress the sexual development and expression of others is to attack the rights of the individual in a very basic and fundamental way.  This is an attempt to deny the nature of man and as such it is not consistent with a rational understanding of man and reality.  Let us hope that a step in the direction of our sexual liberation will be made with a Supreme Court decision that same-sex marriage must be allowed because all people have an equal right to pursue their happiness in domestic partnerships.

Levy: The Moral and Constitutional Case for a Right to Gay Marriage

Robert A. Levy is the chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.  He recently played a major role in strengthening the Second Amendment to the Constitution in the case of Washington, D.C. vs. Heller.  He recently wrote an article appearing in the New York Daily News on 7 January 2010 on the right to gay marriage called The Moral and Constitutional Case for a Right to Gay Marriage.  It is an excellent article, consistent with my oft-stated belief that we would be better served by getting government out of marriages, which I believe are a spiritual union of partners.  The government should only be offering an important legal contract for domestic partnerships, somewhat akin to a small business partnership.  The spiritual aspect of such a domestic partnership, the marriage aspect, is not something government can or should attempt to address.

Levy points out that New Hampshire and Washington, D.C. have just joined Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Vermont in legalizing gay marriage after disappointing defeats in California, Maine, and New York.  Levy says:

The primary purpose of government is to safeguard individual rights and prevent some persons from harming others. Heterosexuals should not be treated preferentially when the state carries out that role. And no one is harmed by the union of two consenting gay people.

For most of Western history, marriage was a matter of private contract between the betrothed parties and perhaps their families. Following that tradition, marriage today should be a private arrangement, requiring minimal or no state intervention. Some religious or secular institutions would recognize gay marriages; others would not; still others would call them domestic partnerships or assign another label. Join whichever group you wish. The rights and responsibilities of partners would be governed by personally tailored contracts — consensual bargains like those that control most other interactions in a free society.

Levy notes that more than 1,000 federal laws dealing mostly with taxes and transfer payments have provisions for married people.  The states have many more laws with provisions for married people.  But Levy says:

Whenever government imposes obligations or dispenses benefits, it may not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That provision is explicit in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, applicable to the states, and implicit in the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the federal government.

Levy also observes that:

No compelling reason has been proffered for sanctioning heterosexual but not homosexual marriages. Nor is a ban on gay marriage a close fit for attaining the goals cited by proponents of such bans. If the goal, for example, is to strengthen the institution of marriage, a more effective step might be to bar no-fault divorce and premarital cohabitation. If the goal is to ensure procreation, then infertile and aged couples should be precluded from marriage.

More and more people are unable to find any substantial merit to the claim that gay domestic partnerships weaken or threaten heterosexual marriages.  As Levy notes, nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies offer employee benefits to domestic partners.  The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has also voted to apply employee benefits to the gay partners of federal employees.  The clock is running out on this cruel act of discrimination.

Proposed Republican Policy List for RNC Supported Candidates

It has been proposed that any candidate to be supported for election in 2010 by the Republican National Committee must support at least 8 of the following 10 policies:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;
(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;
(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;
(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;
(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

 I am going to comment on those of these that I disagree with or have some reservations about.  Here goes:

5)  I do support legal immigration and I wish to make it much easier for those who wish to immigrate with larger quotas and lower fees.  I do believe that immigrants should be encouraged to learn English and citizens should be required to know English.  I favor guest worker status which is relatively easy to obtain, so large numbers of those who are now illegal will have future options which are legal.  Those who are now illegal, but have otherwise not been convicted of any crime, who can obtain the recommendations of past employers, who are willing to pay a reasonable fee to alter their status to a legal guest worker status, and who then work 5 years as a guest worker with a continued clean record and further employer recommendations, should be able to obtain legal resident status.  These terms are simply approximations to what I think is a reasonable policy which will benefit the United States and I am open to further discussions on this complex issue.  My views may not be considered consistent with the intent of the resolution enforcers, however.

8)  I flat out reject the Defense of Marriage Act as an infringement of the right of individuals to live in accordance with their own chosen values and their own conscience.  I reject it also because marriage is a spiritual state of union between people and government has no proper role in such a spiritual matter.  Spiritual matters are the realm of individuals, who may chose to make their spiritual values those of a religion or give them a different basis.  What government does have a legitimate role in is domestic partnerships or civil unions by means of enforcing a contract between the parties.  These contracts should no more limit the persons by number or gender than do small business partnerships.  The legal contracts should have multiple standard terms for the care and responsibility for children, for the sharing of property, and for the sharing of medical expenses and decision-making.  The sexual orientation of the partners should be of no concern to the government.  Those of a religious conviction are free to be guided by their convictions in their domestic partnership and are free to have it blessed as a marriage by their religious authorities, but such status will have no legal bearing at all.  Government for its part will refrain from attempting to make any definition of marriage and will leave that to the religions and to the sovereign People.

9)  If the denial of health care is done by government edict, I agree with this statement.  However, I do not agree with it in the context that medical providers are to be forced to provide medical care, if that is the intent of this ambiguously worded statement.  While I support a woman's right to an abortion if she chooses one, it is also clear that taxpayers, many of whom disagree with this, have the right not to play a role in paying for abortions.  They have the right to their convictions and any attempt to make them complicit in an abortion is morally wrong.  Furthermore, partial birth abortions are too marginal to birth to be allowed by law.  They should clearly be illegal.  Once a child is no longer a part of a woman's body, it has the rights of any individual not to be murdered.  I am therefore in agreement with this statement with respect to abortions.

These 10 required positions are simply a proposal at this point.  It will be interesting to watch what happens to this proposal and whether any of my concerns will be addressed.

An Intelligent View of the Gov. Mark Sanford Affair

I have just read an wise discussion of the Gov. Mark Sanford affair by JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation. It is called Why the Left Looks Like a Big Hypocrite in the Sanford Affair, which title is really not a good indication of the gist of the article. It is really more about the nature of human love and sex and life.

Gov. Mark Sanford

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is a curious mixture of libertarian and conservative political ideas. His concepts of family life as publicly espoused are based upon common moral viewpoints of the Christian religion. It has become a major news story that this man who has been recently in the news for rejecting bailout money and his libertarian/conservative fiscal viewpoint has violated the Christian moral idea of marriage. Indeed, he has. This does show him to be a hypocrite.

But, all Christians are sinners. Some sin worse than others. At least Mark Sanford was not one of the common breed of governors who believes in hugely expanded government with all the additional use of force that entails to select the people's values for them and to force them to live their lives in accordance with those selected values. So, he is a sinner as an adulterer in accordance with his own stated moral principles, but these are impractical principles from a religion which frankly says they are impractical. That religion does not say that a politician has to lust mightily for power and to thwart the free will of the people, yet most of our politicians do just that. Compared to them, Mark Sanford is just a little sinner.

Judged by a more rational moral code than that of Christianity, it is not clear that his loving an Argentinian woman was immoral at all. Perhaps she is worthy of his love. We do know that she had long been a friend and that this was unlikely to have been a casual love. This may be a very genuine and deserved love and Mark Sanford may love his wife also, for all I know.

I can say that he should not accept the conventional Christian morality as being moral, but many people have that fault. Pretty much every politician claims to accept it, at least for the most part. This is also a fault of the people who elect politicians to office. We are hardly likely to see anything better in a democracy.

Clearly, he did fail to perform a duty as Governor of the state of South Carolina by disappearing and not staying in touch with the state government apparatus. It is fair and appropriate to take note of this.

In the end, this is another illustration of why even very capable and thinking people cannot live in accordance with Christian morality, which is inappropriate for human beings living on this earth. We all have an obligation to ourselves, to those we love, and to those we wish to live with in a civilized nation, to discover a rational moral code for life appropriate to human beings in the real world. Mark Sanford may be a tragically damaged man due to his and many Americans holding a much less than rational moral code for life.

Loving Good People

A college student asked me today what I think of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a blended libertarian-conservative, who has confessed to scandalous behavior in the form of an affair with a woman other than his wife. My answer to that question will only make sense in the context of the discussion to follow.

The common morality in America today allows a man to love his mother and his father. It allows him to love as many brothers and sisters as he may have. It allows him to love one unrelated woman and as many children and grandchildren as he may have. In other words, you are allowed to love anyone closely related to you, but no more then one person, and that a woman, who is not related to you.

This common morality had its basis in a religion that believes in one and only one god, a god doomed never to have any equal or near equal to love. This god was never to have the intellectual stimulation of discussions with another great and interesting mind. This god was never to have a worthy lover to love and never to know the heaven of love and sex with that worthy lover. Yet somehow we are said to be made in his image, while yet we are both beings thrilled by the quest for knowledge and sharing it with others and eager lovers as sexual beings. Yet also, we are said to be but sheep compared to the Lord, even as we know sheep to be peculiarly dumb, uninteresting, and helpless animals. So, we are at once made in the image of God, yet we are as dumb, uninteresting, and helpless as sheep in his eyes. This must be incredibly frustrating in his eyes. We can be no consolation to the supreme loneliness of such a being. To be God would surely be an eternal torture. And being so tortured, perhaps He has been cruel in providing man with a morality which is not suitable to man in his quest to live life as man on this earth.

Perhaps man should take it upon himself to establish that morality which will serve as useful principles for a man living on this earth and usually among other humans, many of whom are intelligent, productively helpful, and respectful and supportive of others living their lives. Man, unlike God does not live forever. Man must use his mind in order to provide himself, through considerable work and application of that mind, with the means to enjoy a rich, healthy, and secure life on an earth full of powerful natural forces and other life striving in its interest sometimes against the interest of man. Then again, man must have moral principles suitable for guiding his interactions with many other men and women. These are not the problems of God, so why should one think God can guide man in dealing with them? It makes no more sense to turn to a mythological God for one's morality than it makes sense to turn to a celibate priest for marriage counseling.

This is an unorthodox manner of addressing the issue of who it is appropriate morally for a man to love. But, you cannot get to the correct moral result through the traditional beliefs of religion, which cannot even prove that God exists. More and more, Americans are not very serious about Christianity or the religion of the Hebrews. Yet, they flounder on in the general moral beliefs left as legacies of those religious systems. Most people try at least half-heartedly to live within the construct of those old religious moral beliefs and, not surprisingly, most fail to do a good job of it. They fail so badly that Christianity made it a teaching that no one could live in accordance with its morality, that all were sinners. The very Christian leaders who developed the tenets of Christianity have often been particularly notable for their own sins, as measured against their stated beliefs. St. Augustine and a great many Popes being excellent examples.

Some of the shortcomings of the idea that a man can love only one woman not closely related to him are very obvious. First, many married couples have one or two of them engaged in extramarital affairs during the marriage. At some point as many marriages as not are ended, so the erstwhile couple can find another person to couple up with. There are many marriages in which one member falls in love with someone not in the marriage and the spouse reacts in great anger that they are no longer loved or that their spouse has been unfaithful. Well, in the context of the old religious morality the unfaithfulness is the case. But tragically, it often is not the case that one is unloved simply because one's spouse has come to love someone else also. But, in this primitive religious morality (in its modern version, not its older traditions), the non-monogamous spouse of a marriage is thrown out and assumed immoral simply for loving more than one person not related to him or her.

The morality of love follows from whether the person loved is worthy of being loved by the one who is doing the loving. But, this is not a simple matter to figure out. If the one loving is a very intelligent, productive, nice, interesting, rational, and sensitive person, then each and every person he comes to know who is worthy of his love is a treasure and he will not find many such people. If the one doing the loving is fairly average, then many are worthy of his love and one can understand why conventional morality would tend to say that chaos will result from all the couplings and the likely instabilities in family life which will result. Social pressures to reduce sexually spread diseases and to keep spouses from spending all of their time in bars trying to pick someone up tend to push people toward a general preference for monogamous relationships. So, there is an ongoing conflict between men and women finding others of great interest to them, or sometimes just a bit of interest, and wanting sex outside of marriage and a desire to keep sexual events outside of marriage under some level of control.

But, the unusually intelligent, rational, nice, sensitive, and interesting person who finds someone similarly extraordinary cannot morally be condemned for loving them. In fact, probably no one should be condemned for loving someone who is nearly their equal. Personally, they are doing nothing wrong. They are responding appropriately to the good human qualities of others, though those qualities are less and less good as they fall toward the average or less than the average. But, it is not the fact that someone loves more than one person nearly their equal which we should be condemning.

My primary interest returns however to the extraordinarily intelligent, rational, nice, sensitive, and interesting people. Perhaps conventional morality is as good as it is going to get for conventional people. But the extraordinary person should be free to offer justice, respect, admiration, pleasure, and intimacy to those few others who are extraordinary. If this person is married, they do have obligations to keep and loyalties to maintain. But, these do not necessarily translate into an exclusive right to love or even to sexual relations. They do require that one continue to provide the support of a marriage partner, which in most cases should include love and sexual relations. Circumstances might arise in which divorce is appropriate, but often the extraordinary person has loved and married another extraordinary person and there is no reason that either should stop loving the other.

Yes, conventional morality says that should one spouse have sexual relations outside the marriage, the couple should split up. This in fact very often makes no rational sense. In fact couples often have had long histories of great happiness with one another and have long been good life partners in many things to one another. This should not be forgotten in the light of one of them perhaps coming to love someone else in addition to their spouse. Those married for some time have made many investments in their human and personal capital in coming to know one another, learning to get along with one another, learning to please one another sexually, having children, developing joint careers, building savings and retirement investments, and making a home to provide them with comfort. These jointly held and developed values are very important and any developing interest in others outside the marriage should never lose the context of them.

Jealousy and envy are not worthy emotions. Extraordinary people should not be governed by these base emotions which commonly result from self-doubt about one's worthiness and competence in living life. One spouse should take delight that the other spouse has a wonderful friendship, even if that friendship includes sexual relations. A loving spouse wants his spouse to experience pleasure and to enjoy the richness of life that knowing and being intimate with another extraordinary person can give. The loving spouse wants and should be provided with love himself, but this need not always be an exclusive love, just a very real love. The spouses should be careful to maintain all aspects of their partnership in life, if they wish their marriage to continue and to be strong. These are the moral obligations which are real.

The love of rational human beings is not fickle and it is not usually capable of being turned off once it has been turned on. If someone has proven so good and appealing that you have come to love them, then it really ought to take quite a lot of character development down different paths before you should be able to stop loving them. Love becomes too deeply seated in the rational and good person for it to be dependent upon exclusive love or such things as moderate changes of appearance. Commonly, we do not readily stop loving our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children and grandchildren for fickle reasons. We should not stop loving others we have loved either for fickle reasons.

If a married person is having sex outside of marriage with unworthy persons, this is clearly immoral, as having sex with unworthy people always is even when unmarried.

In this discussion, I have only spoken of marriage as between a man and a woman. Morally, there is no reason to limit marriage to that and only that combination. That is a topic for another discussion.

So, conventional morality has a very simple rule with respect to marriage. This rule is much too simple to actually provide a rational concept of marriage and its real meaning or of love and its real meaning. Life can and should be more rich and wonderful than conventional morality allows it to be.

Hijacking Marriage

In the 2008 election cycle, bans defining marriage as only between a man and a woman were passed in California, Arizona, and Florida. The fact that this happened and did so by a wide margin, is touted as proving that the people are center-right in their beliefs, despite the fact that they voted to make a committed socialist our next President.

I do not find this reassuring for several reasons. Why?

• Marriage is a highly spiritual and complex bond of love, friendship, loyalty, partnership, and sexuality between individuals, which draws strongly on their minds and conscience.
• Government is not competent to manage and judge such complex interpersonal and spiritual relationships as marriage.
• Government is the use of force and force is not the means to deal with marriages.
• Government does and should offer legal contracts which are really civil union contracts, despite being fallaciously called marriage contracts.
• Because government civil union legal contracts are called marriages, many people concede to government control of the spiritual content of marriages and do not attend to providing that spiritual content in their own marriages.
• People with beliefs about what marriage should be, including those with such religious beliefs, want government to impose those beliefs on others because we fallaciously call the legal contracts of civil union by the name marriage.

So, we have the strange phenomena of religious people and others who believe that marriage has great spiritual content, conceding control of that spiritual content implicitly to government. Many of these people want marriage restrictions to be placed on all according to their beliefs, in violation of the freedom of conscience of individuals who do not share their belief. They are making a huge concession to socialism here in which they violate the religious and freedom of conscience rights of others, violate others' rights of association, and generally deny others control of their own lives, their bodies, and their pursuit of happiness. They put government in the position of making some of the most spiritual and intimate decisions one can conceive of in the management of people's lives.

The left views attempts of the right to impose their various religious views with respect to marriage, sex, time of personhood, and the creation of life upon everyone through the use of government force as terribly wrong. Yet religious socialists, like Obama, use the religious teachings such as the obligation to be one's brothers keeper and the story of the Good Sumaritan as the very basis for government redistribution of income and wealth. Religion and other dogmas are constantly clamoring to use governments to force everyone else into living their lives in accordance with their particular beliefs. This is seriously wrong.

The Constitution was wisely constructed to place severe limits upon the role of government in order that individuals would have maximal choice and control in the management of their own lives. Government surely has no business being in the marriage business. It does have reason to be in the civil union legal contract business, so that those who wish to enter into such contracts will be able to control such things as joint property ownership, medical decisions, and providing for children. But, this should not be confused with marriage. Marriage should be left explicitly to the conscience of the directly involved individuals. If marriage draws largely on religion for its spiritual content for them, this is their choice. If it draws such content from their own souls, this is their choice. This is not a choice for government, not even one chosen by a majoritarian principal. In such intimate and personal matters as marriage, a majoritarian government is nothing but a brutal tyranny.

The important issue in every political issue is whether the rights of the individual are honored and the sovereignty of the individual is respected. People are more able to manage their own lives well than government is. Government is brutal force and as such it is the problem, not the solution. Keep government out of marriage.

Require government not to discriminate between individuals in performing its limited functions. In particular, government has no business discriminating against all combinations of people wishing the advantages of a civil union other than that of one man and one woman. Government's role in civil union contracts is like that in a business partnership. We do not have a rule that a business partnership must consist of one man and one woman. There are plenty of examples in which a business partnership consists of two men or of two women. There are cases in which it involves six men or three men and three women. Government does not decide who can form a business partnership by examining the partner's gender or by restrictions to pairs. The civil union contract offered by government is an equivalent of another kind of business partnership and should be treated in a similar manner.

Allow the individuals involved to manage their own lives and maintain the freedom to manage your own life according to your conscience. If you concede the determination of who can be in a civil union contract and who cannot to government, then there is nothing that government cannot stick its nose into. If you wish to maintain spiritual content in your marriage, do not concede control of marriage to government. Keep marriage strictly in the private and personal realm of our lives. If we are to do this, then we must insist upon a strict distinction between marriage and government legal contracts for civil unions.