The Gay Marriage Debate

Gay marriage is one of those issues where people tend to believe very strongly one way or the other, and also tend to believe that the other side is not just wrong, but deeply immoral. Rational discussion on gay marriage is thus very difficult, but nevertheless I will try to add my two cents.

The way I see it, the question of gay marriage boils down to the freedoms of association and speech. Individuals have the right to associate or not associate with whomever they please, provided the other party agrees; individuals also have the right to say what they like and express their views, or to say nothing. There are, of course, widely accepted limits to both of these freedoms, and some limits are more reasonable than others.

I believe the freedoms of association and speech together point to an ideal marriage policy: You should be free to marry whomever you want, and I should be free to acknowledge or ignore it however I want. This ideal marriage policy is what led me to approve R-74 in the last election.

The Conservatives

What Conservatives Won't Like: Conservatives won't like my ideal marriage policy because it means that there will be gay marriages. Gays and lesbians will live together, have sex, publicly express same-sex affection and do whatever else they want.

Why Conservatives Are Wrong: By my count, some 31 states currently outlaw gay marriage with no provision for civil unions. In every single one of these states, thousands or even millions of gays and lesbians under current law live together, have sex and publicly express same-sex affection. Many of them even have made lifelong commitments to each other that they would call marriages if the government did not prohibit it.

These people are already enjoying all the substance of marriage without the name. Even the most anti-gay U.S. conservatives do not advocate using government force to break up these relationships, as is done in nearly 80 countries worldwide. Rather, conservatives oppose gay marriage because they do not want to be required to support it. They fear that government recognition of gay marriage will come with government mandates for private citizens and private organizations to extend private recognition to gay marriages.

Why My Ideal Is Better: The conservative fear of government mandates is well-founded, and this is why my ideal policy preserves the individual's right to acknowledge or ignore someone else's marriage however they choose. To me, this seems to be implicit in the freedom of speech. Washington state's SB-6239 ensured this right for religious organizations, and I think it should be extended to everyone.

The Liberals

What Liberals Won't Like: Liberals won't like my ideal marriage policy because some people will choose not to recognize gay marriages. This includes companies providing benefits to employee spouses, churches performing marriage ceremonies, etc.

Why Liberals Are Wrong: Some employers will provide spousal benefits to heterosexual but not homosexual couples. No doubt in protest, some employers would provide spousal benefits to homosexual but not heterosexual couples. This violates a liberal's idea of "equality," but your right to do as you please does not extend to requiring me to approve of what you do. The freedom of association is meaningless if it does not include the right to not associate.

Furthermore, it is not the government's place to ensure equality in fact, even if such a thing were possible. Rather, the government's guarantee of equality is equality before the law, and that is exactly what my ideal policy provides. Everyone has equal rights to marry or not, and everyone has equal rights to say whatever they want about others' marriages.

Why My Ideal Is Better: Over time, the market may sort out societal preferences. If the vast majority of society ends up favoring gay marriage as liberals insist, the market will punish organizations that oppose gay marriage, just as it now punishes organizations like the KKK that overtly stand for racism. On the other hand, if liberals are less than correct about societal attitudes, we may end up with multiple equilibria, with different organizations catering to the different sides. My ideal marriage policy allows both cases to occur naturally, depending on how societal preferences change, rather than imposing societal change through government.

The Death Star was an Inside Job

Luke's Change: an Inside Job:


A few years ago, an email forward made the rounds making similar claims. I know at least one person who, because of that forward, gave up their prior belief that George W. Bush was behind 9/11, saying that if they could make a Star Wars conspiracy sound that convincing, maybe there wasn't anything to the real-life conspiracy theories either.

Of course, careful observers will notice a few errors in the video... But I'll leave those to the YouTube commenters.

Socialists on Chavez

When Venezuela's Hugo Chavez died, conservatives and libertarians cheered while Democrats mourned. But with so many on America's right decrying Chavez as a socialist, what did the actual self-proclaimed socialists think of him?

Not much. The Socialist Equality Party newsletter, available online at the Bellingham Politics and Economics blog, has this to say about him:

Chavez's nationalist rhetoric, his government's diversion of revenues from the country's protracted oil bonanza to pay for social assistance programs and its forging of extensive economic ties to China earned him the hatred of both Washington and a fascistic ruling class layer in Venezuela. They did not, however--as both he and his pseudo-left supporters claimed--represent a path to socialism.

Chavez was a bourgeois nationalist, whose government rested firmly on the military from which he came and which continues to serve as the crucial arbiter in the affairs of the Venezuelan state.
...
Both the share of the country's economy controlled by the private sector and the portion of national income going to employers as opposed to labor were greater under Chavez than before he took office. An entire new ruling class layer--dubbed the boliburguesia-- was spawned by chavismo, growing rich off of government contracts, corruption and financial speculation.

 While I'm a bit late for commentary on Chavez, I found this interesting, as it is not the first time I've found the Socialist Equality Party agreeing with the conservative mainstream...

Kein Eier für Kinder

I first learned about Kindereier back in my high school German class. If you've never heard of them, they are chocolate eggs with little plastic toys inside. It was always a bit of a mystery why something like this never caught on in the United States, home of the Happy Meal toy.

But it turns out, there's a simple answer--toys in chocolate eggs are illegal. Here in the land of the free, our government believes we could not handle the shock of opening a chocolate egg to find a plastic toy inside. The toys are considered a "non-nutritive component," and thus are forbidden by a 1938 law.

Anyone with a lick of common sense can see that Kindereier pose no threat to anyone. Even though some of the toys have small parts, they are hidden inside the quite large plastic capsule. But common sense runs up against federal bureaucracy for people who try to bring Kindereier into the U.S. from another country. Attempting to import Kindereier comes with a $2500 fine per egg, and tens of thousands are confiscated by border agents every year. The two Seattle men in the linked story above spent two-and-a-half hours in border detention because they tried to bring six Kindereier into the country. That would've been a $15,000 mistake if the agents hadn't let them off with a warning. (Thanks be to the Border Agents, the Beneficent, the Merciful!)

So when you see reports from the bipartisan immigration reform group, or Rand Paul, or anyone else insisting on increasing funding for the border patrol before even trying to reform any of the other problems in our broken immigration system, keep in mind that this is what they're doing with the money they already have. Do they really need even more?

On Drones and Droning On

Yesterday, Rand Paul gave an old-style filibuster where he talked on the Senate floor for 12 hours and 54 minutes about drones and executive power. At first, Paul wanted the Obama administration to come out and say that it is unconstitutional for the government to kill American citizens on American soil without due process. Obama's response: "No comment."

Later, Paul was willing to compromise and end the filibuster for a vote on a non-binding "sense of the Senate" resolution that "the use of drones to execute or target American citizens on American soil who pose no imminent threat clearly violates Constitutional rights." Democrats (in particular, Majority Whip Dick Durbin) refused.

Ultimately, Paul ended the filibuster without accomplishing his explicit goals, though he has clearly energized his supporters and apparently turned a libertarian talking point into GOP policy. The Minority Leader Mitch McConnell showed up to explicitly support Paul and encourage other Republicans to do the same.

Not all Republicans agreed, however. Senator Lindsey Graham called the whole thing "ridiculous," and he's right -- it should be. The proper response from the Obama administration would have been, "Of course, it's unconstitutional to kill citizens on our soil without due process." This should not even be a question. Indeed, if they had responded quickly enough, they could have devastated Rand Paul's credibility and painted him and libertarians in general as paranoid freaks. But they didn't, and that really has me puzzled.

Obama had the opportunity to give the Tea Party and libertarians a roundhouse kick to the face on prime time TV, and he didn't. He did nothing, and doing nothing gave Paul an incredible victory. Durbin went even further, and objected to just a vote on a non-binding resolution on the issue. Why are Obama and Durbin (and the rest of the Democrats) willing to hand Republicans such a PR coup just to hold on to a power they claim they don't want to use anyway?

At this point, it would be easy to fall into conspiracy theories, but I suspect the Democrats are being honest when they say they don't want to kill Americans in the streets. However, being in power, they thought they had an opportunity to expand that power, and they took it. Everyone likes to have options. They just didn't think anyone would notice. Once libertarians did notice, the Democrats thought no one would pay attention to the libertarians anyway. Now that Paul has forced the issue and gotten people to pay attention, the Democrats don't want to turn around and admit that he's right, because they think they'll look bad if they do. They don't seem to recognize that digging their heels in and insisting on the right to kill American citizens without due process makes them look even worse.

Now that Paul has everyone talking, it will be interesting to see what he does with it. Can he inspire actual change?