Posted
Tuesday, April 12, 2005 @ 2122 PST
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Gay marriage results in many contortions.
Back in Canada, Harper
and the Tories are busy trying to kill the gay marriage bill,
and claiming they don't need to invoke the notwithstanding clause
of the constitution to do so. So what if more than a hundred constitutional
lawyers have told them they are wrong. What could legal experts
possibly know that the Loyal Opposition doesn't? Perhaps shit
from Shinola.
Meanwhile, Libertarian
Jennifer Roback Morse has published this intellectually convoluted
opinion on why the freedom of same-sex couples to marry will
result in the individual person being left alone and "naked"
to face the evil and overwhelming power of the state - as in all
of us individual people. If nothing else, this is a perfect example
of how Libertarianism is not about individual freedom against
the tyranny of the state, but rather the illusion of freedom within
the shackles of conservative social conformity. A choice quote:
It
is simply not possible to have a minimum government in a society
with no social or legal norms about family structure, sexual
behavior, and childrearing. The state will have to provide support
for people with loose or nonexistent ties to their families.
The state will have to sanction truly destructive behavior,
as always. But destructive behavior will be more common because
the culture of impartiality destroys the informal system of
enforcing social norms.
Like the informal system
of burning fags at the stake and stoning adulterers? Or perhaps
the great informal normative system in some Muslim countries of
casting the victims of rape out of their homes and families as
"unclean"? Wonderful respite from the tyranny of the
state that protects individual rights through its smothering rule
of law.
My take on her opinion?
She justifies her preconceived notions of what a family ought
to be in the language of freedom, but freedom is not the foundation
of her argument - prejudice is. There is nothing in her argument
that acknowledges that as a society we can choose to change our
norms, and thus still have norms, just not the ones that failed
to recognize the diversity of human relationships.
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