Friday, February 04, 2005

Gay Marriage, Again

I want to restate a point I made earlier:

The reason why it is especially bad for gay "marriage" to come to the US through court decisions rather than through legislation (although I don't support gay "marriage" or "civil unions" myself at all), is that the legislature is a body of choice, whereas the courts a body of necessity. This means that forcing the acceptance of gay "marriage" at the courts creates a tide that cannot be stopped, unlike in the legislature, so we are going to wind up with polygamy, group marriage, and incest marriage.

In other words, if gay marriage were seen as an issue to be settled by legislation, then the legislatue could say "this far, and no further," with no other justification than "we find gay marriage okay, but we don't like polygamy."

However, when phrased in terms of rights, once you say that any two people have the right to be married, and htat that right cannot be abridged by a social more, then you lose all principled opposition to abridge that right by other social mores.

Why not allow brothers and sisters to get married? Or if the concern about inbreeding develops, why not homosexual incestuous couples, where such is not a concern, or heterosexual ones that agree not to have children with each other? Why not polygamy? All of the arguments against polygamy ultimately boil down to "because we don't like polygamy," or , as Steve Sailer says, because civil rights "don't apply" to the groups of people whom we think of when we think of polygamy, which, in the end, is not a good enough reason, and sooner or later, the courts will say that.

That is all.

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