The conservative case for gay marriage – includes video by one of the lawyers for the California Supreme court case. He defended Bush in Bush v Gore, and makes the case that this is not a conservative or liberal issue.
I welcome your comments (if you read the article). No being douchy, please, I’d like to hear the viewpoints of everyone here.
I think that the conservative case for gay marriage can be (and has been) enunciated even more concisely about forty years ago; “The State has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.”
If you’re concerned about liberty, any intrusion into the peoples’ private lives has to be justified on the grounds that the infringement is necessary in order to reduce another, greater infringement. As noted in the linked article, opponents to same-sex marriage have consistantly failed to demonstrate that.
So the conservative case for gay marriage is that laws forbidding it are unwarranted intrusions into the private affairs of the people and thus unnecessary extensions of governmental power.
— Steve derives great enjoyment from the fact that the quote above, enunciating essentially a minarchist view on “sodomy” laws, comes from a raging liberal. (Pierre Elliot Trudeau, at the time Justice Minister for the Canadian government who was not long later chosen as leader of the Liberal party and elected as Prime Minister.)
I think that case is presented excellently. I just wish people would listen. Of course, if they listened in the first place, i don’t think this would be an issue.
To me, it’s very simple although its legal basis may be questionable…
The Declaration of Independence, a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted, states simply that we as citizens have “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
I completely believe that marriage, in ALL forms, falls under all three of these rights, especially the pursuit of happiness.
Given that it’s an election year, my first response is, “It’s a trick, get an axe.”