Wrong far different than illegal
(My Clovis News Journal column for January 10, 2014)
A constitutional amendment defining marriage, in any way, would be wrong; an egregious example of government overreach. It would be the moral equivalent of Sharia Law; just because it happens to support your religious ideals doesn't change that fact. Once you claim it is right to base laws on your religion, and apply those laws to people of different beliefs just because their behavior offends you, you are opening the door for those who have different, or even adversarial, beliefs to do the same to you. Is that really a door you wish to open even wider?
Constitutions should only exist to prevent governments from infringing on individual liberty by limiting what government employees, rules, and laws are permitted to do, not to give them more latitude to violate some minority. To use the constitution to make a political statement or to express your solidarity with religious beliefs is to abuse it.
Nowhere does the Constitution give government the authority to define, ration, or regulate marriage. This is another example of the overwhelming number of things which are not within governmental authority. No one's marriage needs the state as the third, and superior, spouse.
The lack of such an amendment isn't forcing anyone to do anything, which would be wrong, but passing that amendment would result in forbidding others from doing something that doesn't involve you; something purely voluntary and none of your business. Which is also wrong.
It doesn't matter if you write a constitutional amendment to legalize the violation or marginalization of some individuals and their consensual relationships, it will still be wrong. Chattel slavery used to be "legal", too, as were FDR's Japanese Internment Camps.
No law can make right something which is wrong- which, ironically, is the same argument the opponents of the new laws granting marriage freedom seem to be using. This should make it obvious that right and wrong are completely separate from legal and illegal. Aggressive violence and theft are the proper purview of laws; absolutely nothing else is or can ever be. Even if you consider something a sin you have no authority to outlaw it as long as it doesn't violate the person or property of a third person- vices can never legitimately be crimes.
I find it very sad that the idea of writing a new rule defining marriage in the state constitution is so popular around the region. What ever happened to being neighborly and keeping your nose out of other people's business? I guess only radicals such as myself still believe in that virtue.
.
I was going to comment on the Clovis News Journal site, but I didn't see a "comment" link. However, being a true Libertarian like you, Kent, I agree with you. A constitutional amendment defining marriage would be an abuse of the Constitution. I can only assume that this idea stems from certain Christians' view of marriage. It's interesting to note, however, that the Bible doesn't define marriage as one man and one woman. If fact, at the time of Jesus, a Hebrew man could have as many wives as he could afford and wanted. And whether it was one wife or two or more, they were chattel property of the man. He also had sexual access to any female slaves in his household. I know the KJV of the Bible tends to call them servants, but the reality was that they couldn't tell the master of the house, "You know what? I've got a better job offer from down the street so I'm giving you my two weeks notice." Further, the only reason the government is in the marriage business at all is for the money, the fee for the license and the fees for a divorce. There is no reason for the government to be involved in a consensual adult contract of marriage. I could go on but it's tiring to think about the ignorance and hypocrisy that surrounds me like the ocean around an atoll of reason a person doesn't have the baggage of a bronze age, patriarchal, sky god complex. And if that last statement offends anyone then answer me this: Why did your all-knowing Christian God knowingly create Satan, knowing that he would be evil?
ReplyDelete