Just making sure its consistent. I stated from the start that government has no business in this matter. I do feel that this whole gay marriage isnt about equality for homosexuality and more for the politics of "gay rights". If equality were the real cause then marriage should have no limitations. Open it up to anyone for any reason wishing to be married
Good points. Fits very well with Sobers good points in post #74. As to "gay rights" being politicized, oh no doubt but then guns, babies, prayer, etc. are all subjects that are equally politicized when in fact these are issues of an individual basis and if anything, should be left to local folk to work out the details.
It all comes down for me as a debate of
positive rights verses negative rights. I side with negative rights as these are natural rights and exist without the need of an action by any person or requiring them to do something. Freedom of speech for example doesn't require someone to act in order for me to open my mouth, I just open my mouth. And you are free to listen or not but neither of us can use force or fraud to exercise our natural action of liberty.
If an individual wants to avail themselves of a right, all they need do is act upon them and the right is theirs. To prevent such rights to exist are nothing but wrongful and harmful barriers to individual liberty and then when a collective sense comes about that such a right needs to exist (positive liberty), it becomes a necessary action by someone other than the individual seeking the right to act in order for it all to exist. Get a law passed or some public display or protest to give an individual his box on which to speak if you will.
An example of positive rights IMO are the various civil rights laws (gay rights being among them) which require collective action but also collective action by political operations can at any time by majority remove the right for any person to enjoy. Natural rights or negative rights/liberty exist beyond the scope of human actions of restriction and tread closer to the ideal I hold that I own nobody, nobody owns me, you own you and me owns me! No force, no fraud, knock yourself out and if you want to call it marriage, then call it marriage.
Marriage as we know it is anyway a religious/state/aristocracy construct to begin with and is based more on a relationship that one person is the property of the other. The relationship may seem without force, fraud and a voluntary action but there are 3rd party requirements imposed before the marriage takes place and if one or both parties decide to end the relationship, both parties are or can be bound to terms and conditions imposed by 3rd parties. In old common law arrangements, the parties were often tied together by contract and it required a jury trail to resolve the matter so divorce at the common law was often far more complex and complicated than the typical administrative law marriage. A famous example of how complex a common law marriage can be is the infamous Lee Marvin divorce. Contracts could fulfill a vital role for gay couples but the fact that some areas of access are still denied them by the state complicates this approach. Remove these barriers and the political motive IMO would lessen if not disappear altogether!
