67 notes &
On nation-state marriage licensing monopolies and the history of law.
Reblogged from clintirwin:
A source with a spoken agenda (Libertarian in this case) is not a useful or reliable source.
This is ridiculous on its face. It would mean that you are an unreliable source, your agenda being anti-Libertarian, and I am the reliable one, because I haven’t stated any agenda. If anything, a spoken agenda makes a source more reliable, because the alternative is a hidden agenda. BTW, mine is a partial libertarianism—for less government than the average conservative, but far more than a pure libertarianism or emergence.
There are two ways to look at it as a monopoly: 1) Within any state they have sole authority to define marriage for the purpose of license and automatic benefits; 2) Wherever you are in the country, the government has that authority. The Fed has given it to the states, but you can’t put together a group of concerned citizens, call two people married, and get a license. The government has control, and they aren’t sharing. That’s a monopoly.
So we have to look at it “correctly” for your idea to be true? Within any state, individually people have the right to define marriage either officially, personally or as business. Monopoly means one, this is many.
I don’t think you read what I actually wrote. I’ll try again: there are two ways in which this can be seen as or said to be a monopoly, which I’ve explained above. While individuals can define marriage personally or for business purposes, none have the right to define it officially. If they did, there would be no legal question, they would simply define it to include whatever types of marriage they want. As it is, they need state approval.
You don’t have to see it this way, but if someone describes it as a monopoly, it is a legitimate description.
It’s not illegal, but that’s not the point, is it? The problem is that the government is in the “marriage business” in the first place. The state shouldn’t be declaring anyone married, or licensing anything. Then there would be no debate over legalization.
Yes, it is the point. If the state had a monopoly on defining marriage, then the state would ban all non-sanctioned marriage. They do not. Hetero couples may choose official marriage or not. Gays want the same right.
You’re making the libertarian point. If the state didn’t have the monopoly on defining (official) marriage, then same-sex couples wouldn’t need to seek state sanction. You don’t need to seek legalization for something that isn’t illegal.
That the state shouldn’t be in the “marriage business” is a moral judgement. The idea you have is that discrimination is okay, as long as it is not a government doing it. The only way to uniformly end discrimination is equal protection under the law. This cannot be achieved in your stateless utopia of “personal choice.”
That discrimination is not okay is a “moral judgment.” Are you suggesting we exclude all moral reasoning from political discourse?
By licensing heterosexual unions as marriages they are making a positive claim; calling one thing marriage means that other things are not.
Just because one entity calls something marriage, does not mean what an individual calls marriage is not. Gays simply want equal protection under the law.
What it means is that the government in most states has, at this point, chosen to define marriage one way. For all government purposes—including taxes—anything outside of that definition is not marriage. Whether a family or community or church wants to define same-sex unions as marriage is not at issue.
If I’m understanding, libertarians would rather heterosexuals lose the recognition from the state. Then every union is considered equal, and the state loses a teensy bit of power. And no more Prop 8 shenanigans.
Equal protection under the law makes more sense than “you can discriminate against whoever you want because it is your personal choice.”
What I described is “equal protection under the law”.
Stop comparing this to racism. It’s untenable, and it’s insulting.
Yes, only certain kinds of discrimination are okay. Only certain people “own” discrimination as a word, have a monopoly on it.
Uh, I was referring to your “seat at the lunch counter” metaphor. You’ve repeatedly demonstrated either a total refusal or inability to respond to the arguments presented to you, this being a clear example. At no point did I suggest that discrimination is okay, yet you attacked that straw man several times.
You’re also not being coherent. You say the government doesn’t have sole power to define marriage, but then you acknowledge that they do, by persisting in your argument for sanction. If they didn’t have a monopoly (within each state), there would be no reason to pursue inclusion in the official definition; there wouldn’t even be an “official” definition. Its existence demonstrates the existence of monopoly control.
(via clintirwin, whakahekeheke)
