I confess, as a Libertarian, I can’t get upset about gay marriage, since I really value personal freedom and the separation of church and state. If someone belongs to a religion that forbids it, then that’s their choice, and if another religion allows it between consenting adults, then go for it. I don’t care about gays in the military, getting married, etc., so long as it ain’t mandatory that I participate, because that doesn’t happen to be my thing.:)
I agree that the definition of “marriage” has changed vastly through the centuries. What’s the quote I read recently? “The fact that you can’t sell your daughter for three goats and a cow means we’ve already redefined marriage.”
Kinda true, no? If what some other posters say is true, that “marriage” is only valid based on what God says, then let each religion have their ceremonies before God, let the legal part be something separate, and then come the afterlife we’ll find out who was right.
That’s my LIbertarian view on it, FWIW.
Let me explain why I don’t entirely agree.
The first reason is that your live-and-let-live approach will not be permitted by the homo-fascists, as we are already beginning to see. Tolerance, which by definition implies some disapproval, will not be tolerated. Only enthusiastic agreement and approval will be allowed in the public square.
The second is a variant of that old progressive standby, the Precautionary Principle. This calls for the prohibition of the introduction of any chemical of process until those who want to use it have demonstrated that it will NOT create environmental problems. Let’s leave to one side that doing so is just impossible since it is impossible to prove a negative.
The idea behind PP is that in a complex system side effects of any change may be greater than the primary effects and should be considered before allowing changes to the system. This is, by progressives, normally applied only to the physical environment.
But why shouldn’t it, or a variant, be applied to the cultural/social environment? Is there a more complex environment in existence?
Yet liberals insist that we can make random changes indefinitely without incurring disastrous results. Nothing is more foundational to any society than its marriage customs. In fact, probably the primary way anthropologists classify societies is by marriage customs. Yet we, in our arrogance, assume we can tamper with the foundations of our society as we please without causing disaster.