George Weigel argues on National Review Online that the passage of gay marriage in New York “is an exercise of power that libertarians ought, in theory, to resist, not support.” Here is more:
Marriage, as both religious and secular thinkers have acknowledged for millennia, is a social institution that is older than the state and that precedes the state. The task of a just state is to recognize and support this older, prior social institution; it is not to attempt its redefinition. To do the latter involves indulging the totalitarian temptation that lurks within all modern states: the temptation to remanufacture reality. The American civil-rights movement was a call to recognize moral reality; the call for gay marriage is a call to reinvent reality to fit an agenda of personal willfulness. The gay-marriage movement is thus not the heir of the civil-rights movement; it is the heir of Bull Connor and others who tried to impose their false idea of moral reality on others by coercive state power.
Doesn’t Weigel’s statement that marriage is an institution that “is older than the state and that precedes the state” leave room for the libertarian alternative of getting rid of state marriage altogether? Bet he wouldn’t be comfortable with that! How would that work for you?
And doesn’t his statement below make you a bit uncomfortable if he extended it logically beyond the realm of marriage to other old social institutions?
“The task of a just state is to recognize and support this older, prior social institution; it is not to attempt its redefinition.”
Sure makes me uncomfortable! He might want to reintroduce slavery, for all we know.
He doesn’t give a thorough defense of which “prior” institutions should be preserved, It is clear, though, that he is not arguing that all of them should be preserved.
Could absolutely care less about the Gay Marriage issue. For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t.
Either way, I have no idea what this guys argument has to do with gay marriage, but it sure as hell doesn’t sound very Libertarian to me. Personally, I could care less what people do in the privacy of their own homes and it’s consensual. The states job is to protect us when it doesn’t become consensual. No more. No less.
Since when is it the task of the state to recognize and support pre-state social institutions? In my neck of the woods, “pre-state” marriage & family values involved things like bride abduction, polygyny, and exposure of unwanted newborns. The state reinvented reality and redefined such things as crimes, as well as countless other pre-state social institutions that once formed the fabric of tribal society, like, oh, the blood feud and human sacrifice.
“The task of a just state is to recognize and support this older, prior social institution…”
Absolute tosh!
These Libertarians (at least this one) cannot seem to get a foothold on the ideals of the m=Libertarian movement. In one instance (if it furthers their obvious conservative agenda) they will claim that the state should not interfere with personal liberties. But when the state does EXACTLY that by lifting restrictions on specific liberties for a number of its citizens (as New York did with marriage equality), and that expression of liberty does not gel with their conservative agenda, then all bets are off. Find an ideal and stick with it, for crying out loud!
But you are missing Weigel’s main point, as most libertarians do. Exactly what “restrictions” did New York state lift? None. The status quo before the legislation allowed ANYONE, including gays, to marry, and gays in New York had the same sexual freedoms as heterosexuals. Marriage is an institution connecting a man and a woman to each other and to the community. Just because the state decides to call a table a chair doesn’t make it a chair. Weigel is not arguing that immoral institutions, such as slavery, should be allowed to persist just because they have been around for a long time. He is arguing that it is an abuse of state power for the state to REDEFINE fundamental social institutions that are prior (both historically and philosophically) to the state. Perhaps this is a weak argument and can be undermined on some grounds, but it is not weak on the typical civil rights grounds that most gay marriage proponents want to use.
Some libertarians argue that the state shouldn’t be in the marriage business at all. I think that is a very unwise position, but at least it is coherent. The idea that gays face restrictions because they can’t marry (which they can, since no state requires one to verify sexual preferences as a condition to marry) only makes sense if one completely redefines what marriage has always meant. If the state licenses marriage, it should allow that license to all citizens. But that is very different that recasting marriage as something it isn’t.
I don’t think that Weigel would support anti-miscegenation laws because race isn’t a characteristic that is fundamental to what marriage is. Gender is fundamental. Anti-miscegenation laws were put in place (another abuse of state power) to achieve an immoral objective and should certainly be lifted wherever they exist.
But slavery was considered a moral institution in its day, the “cornerstone” of a whole American society: http://www.speech-guru.com/speech/113.php.
So, what if I were to tell you that slavery included not only ownership of others but also any labor market action that “exploited” others in some way. Next, I say that Wal-Mart should be forced to shut its doors, since slavery is immoral and illegal.
Though it probably wouldn’t be hard to find a significant number of lefty kooks who would agree with the statement that Wal-Mart is practicing slavery, most people would think the idea is silly. Wal-Mart might be unjust in a variety of ways, but they aren’t practicing slavery. Slavery is something else and always has been.
Similarly, homosexual unions may be good or bad, moral or immoral. But they aren’t marriages. Marriage is something else and always has been.
It’s just not true. If one wants to talk about “pre-state” social reality, which is what Weigel is doing in his original post, one has to deal with a huge range of customs & practices. Marriage is a social custom and thus has always been a product of redefinition and reality engineering on the part of groups in power. To think that monogamous heterosexual unions with reqired consent of both parties (plus both parties required to be adults) is some kind of timeless anthropological reality of marriage, even in the west, is very naive.
Or to put it another way: I have no problem with the view that marriage be between one (consenting adult) woman and one (consenting adult) man, as long as it is recognized as 1) a view that itself is the product of a long process of redefinition and reality creation, and 2) a normative view. I disagree with this particular position, but I recognize its argumentative coherence and embrace the framework in other areas: realities like “human rights” were created in precisely this way.
However, I do have a big problem with a view that claims to descriptively find some sort of timeless naturalistic anthropological evidence for above historically very latter-day normative project.
And speaking of latter-day things: Your own church’s current official view on marriage is the product of what Weigel calls coercive state power remanufacturing reality. I would be interested in hearing your moral-realist take on that issue, if you care to share it. You can also send me an email if you don’t wish to discuss it publicly.
Isn’t the legal term for the institution the state recognizes “civil-union”, or at least a “civil marriage”? Even if it’s not, gay “marriage” recognized by the state, could not be any sort of legal miscategorization — the state defines the type of unions it recognizes, and this recognition does not need to be based on a historical tradition of any other governing body (i.e., a church). Like you say, “Just because the state decides to call a table a chair doesn’t make it a chair”. Well, what’s actually going on here is that people are confusing the concept of state-sanctioned unions with unions as defined by pre-existant institutions and organizations, simply because the two concepts are homonyms. The state DID call something a ‘chair’ when it wasn’t a chair to begin with, it just looked like one at the time, and now that this intrinsic difference has become apparent people are confused. I mean, nobody is forcing the Church to marry homosexuals. The Church has nothing to do with this.
New York State didn’t redefine any sort of hallowed social institution. They expanded access to a rotten, debased social institution in order to ensure that homosexuals have equal opportunity to subject themselves to state involvement in their personal lives. But let’s not quibble about what’s hallowed and what’s not. Rather, lets’ focus on the real issue here: supporting and enhancing social institutions (that we think are moral!) that precede the state.
Obviously, the next step for New York to truly enhance the ancient social institution of marriage is to legalize the arranged marriages of children. That way, the parents of both heterosexual and homosexual children can benefit from and enjoy one of the oldest human institutions: the dowry. And, sure, we might have some lingering concerns about the agency of these youth, but we shouldn’t really be concerned about minor infringements on their person, as long as we’re ensuring that the state is reinforcing social institutions that precede it.
After arranged marriages, New York should really reconsider its ban on voluntary human sacrifice. Archaeologists have long known that certain cultures (Here’s looking at you, Celts!) engaged in ritual human sacrifice, relying on drugged up volunteers to serve as their sacrificial offerings. This practice long-preceded the northern European states, violated no one’s rights of personhood, and really ought to be endorsed by the modern state as an ancient social institution that strengthens community bonds and reinforces cultural and religious norms.
At this point, the deficiencies in my historical training are really starting to show. Can anyone else recommend moral, antiquated social institutions that the state ought to be endorsing and enhancing?
New York State isn’t redefining marriage through an act of North Korean-style tyranny, as Weigel maintains. It is responding to the fact that something around a majority of citizens in New York State now think a lasting homosexual bond deserves to be described as a marriage. And that number is only going to rise over time. Your beef, like Weigel’s beef, is with the American people, not the state.
Oh, and by the way, Weigel’s argument implies, I think, that divorce should be prohibited under the law. How on earth is that a libertarian policy?