The Cult of the Total State Now Pronounces You Person and Spouse

The Cult of the Total State Now Pronounces You Person and Spouse
by Dave Munger

The Soviet Union had a surprising malaria problem for a region so far from the equator. Apparently mosquitoes are a more important factor than heat, and they had plenty of mosquitoes. Nevertheless, official records show that there was a period during the reign of Stalin that was totally free of even a single case. Stalin had decreed that malaria no longer existed in the USSR, so physicians filling out death certificates were forced to write something else under "cause of death." Under absolute statism, the government can do things like that. It can kill non-violently by denying that its victims ever existed. It can promise to alter the laws of physics for you, in exchange for your loyalty.

I will now oppose gay marriage statutes, not on the grounds that gay marriage is a bad thing, but that it cannot possibly exist, and that a government that is able to decree that it does exist would be a tyranny, placing itself above natural law, and reality itself.

An excellent case can be made against creating this new entity entirely on the grounds of its unintended consequences. Redefining marriage would of course be bound to effect the actual institution of marriage. It would antagonize some churches, who have a stronger claim of authority to recognize marriage than the state does. It could lead to a great deal of the sort of nightmarishly complex litigation that benefits lawyers at the expense of society. But this would be missing the point. If recognition of truth has negative consequences, that would be no reason to prefer lies. Even if lies can benefit us, truth still retains its inherent value. It is not within the lawful authority of the legislature, the courts, or the voters to create a new form of marriage, no matter what intentions are behind it.

Before presuming to invent an unprecedented new form, we should at least meditate and deliberate at some length about what marriage is. Dictionary definitions can at least establish what the traditional consensus is. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary contains the following definitions of the word marriage:

1: a: the state of being married.
b: the mutual relation of husband and wife : WEDLOCK
c: the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family
2: an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; esp. : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities
3: an intimate or close union

Definition 1a is immaterial. Definitions 1b and 1c would preclude same-sex marriage, although they could refer to a more traditional form of gay marriage (a gay man married to Phillis Diller). Definition 2 is so highly flexible that whether the state recognizes it or not does not matter. It's easy enough to throw a party to celebrate any occasion you wish, and Unitarian churches, among others, have been holding gay marriage ceremonies for some time now. Definition 3 is even more subjective, and if formalized, would entitle inanimate objects and insubstantial concepts to special legal status.

I would add that at least one form of marriage is a biological fact of nature, regardless of ceremony or legal status. The Judeo-Christian tradition states that at one time there where only two people in the world, and that they were married. At no point were they wed to one another; they came into existence married. Secular authorities tend to agree that there were marriages in prehistoric times. Common law marriage has historically not been regarded as any less valid than ceremonial marriage; in Medieval times (hardly an era characterized by public sexual license) common law marriages were the rule. Recent studies of the pair bonds of some bird show them to be virtually, if not entirely, indistinguishable from marriages. The birds even have sex outside of the pair bond, and do it in an apparently sneaky way that gets ornithologists accused of anthropomorphism. In each of these cases, marriage is recognized by society (or implicitly by the flock) as a fact of nature driven by the biology and intentions of the involved male and female.

The more pertinent question though, is not what the consensus is about what marriage is, or what anyone thinks it is, but who has the authority to determine what marriage is, and how far that authority extends. On an even more basic level, what is marriage in fact, regardless of what anyone says it is?

It is often presumed that the church or the state has the authority to "join a man and a woman", creating a marriage ex nihlo. One minute the two are separate, perhaps adulterous, then, the moment permission is obtained from the necessary bureaucrats (not a second sooner), the two become one, and the union becomes lawful. This is similar to believing that the church by proclamation can cause the sun to orbit the earth, or that statute could cause 2+2 to equal 5 (or pi to equal 3 or 4, as has been attempted). Marriage is not an artificial construct.

Back to the specific case of the gay marriage movement. This is not a reduction of the power of the state over sovereign citizens. It is an attempt to expand of the power of the state over reality itself, by once again setting the precedent that it is up the government to determine the nature of reality. It is a political attempt to alter a fact of nature in order to reward a certain group for it's loyalty to the left, bait the religious right, and vilify those mean, reality obsessed conservatives. It is working. Cowardly indecisive morons (AKA swing voters), feel they must support this delusional proposition in order to prove that they are not gay (opposed = homophobic = gay). Empty headed Bill Mahers who wish to call themselves libertarian without thinking it through buy into the pretense of expanding personal rights because it's no skin off their nose, and it allows them to act more-philosophically-consistent-than-thou. When friends and families of sexual inverts feel pushed into deciding between reality and their loved ones, reality loses (Love me, love any legislation wrought in my name).

Meanwhile, violence against presumed homosexuals increases as sexual orientation is politicized, since political conflicts are inherently violent. This is one of the inevitable consequences of treating gay people not as human beings, but as pink banners to be waved around as symbols of one's own tolerance, one's own secure heterosexuality, and the supposed power of the collective to revoke natural law. "I have many gay friends" they say. Bully for them; unfortunate for the battered corpses in our streets. Fortunately for the left, corpses make even better symbols, particularly if they've been tortured and mutilated.

As with other allegedly social issues, many claim that the conservative position (opposition to new legislation) is statist, and that there is something libertarian about pretending that the state can invent new rights. This is the opposite of true.