Charlie
Rights.
The rights you say you believe in are ancient ones. They are rights to property, to free association, to freedom of contact, and others. They are very much part of the Western tradition, and represent the conclusion of Locke, Jerrerson, and others. You regard them as axiomatic for your present purposes. I’m willing to accept that to keep this within some limits. But the conclusion of one argument forms the axiom for another. These axioms do not stand apart from the rest of our traditions.
If you want to claim that based on free association and free contact, two homosexual people have a right to live together, to jointly own property, to assume obligations to each other, then we are in prefect agreement.
Can they not do these things at present? What does “gay marriage” have to do with any of this?
But.
Do you REALLY believe in free association and free contact, or is it just a pose? Do all people have these rights, and are they all inalienable? If so, does it not follow that people have a right to not associate with people they dislike, for whatever reason? Do they not have a right to refuse to enter into contacts with others if they so wish?
To answer my own question, no, people do not possess these rights, as a matter of law, in present day America. The reason why they do not possess them is not very hard to find. If all people posses these rights, and the majority of the people disapprove of a minority, they can make life very difficult for the minority. They can chose not to associate with them, not to enter into contract with them. In blunt terms, they can refuse to hire them, to give them shelter, to sell to them, and so on.
The U.S. government has decided that this state of affairs is not acceptable, and that therefore the rights of free association and contact that you and I both cherish must be curtailed. Being a fellow believer in our inalienable rights, I’m sure you will join me in regretting this state of affairs, and in particular, in condemning the courts who have been chiefly responsible for trampling on our rights in the pursuit of a chimerical and abstract Liberty.
As you yourself say; “Restrictions, imposed by law or social compulsion, that violate these self-evident rights are inherently immoral and unjust.” Why then are you so anxious to see laws passed that do exactly that, and to exert precisely that compulsion?
Ok. Stripping away the legal chatter, you want to craft an argument which will prohibit the “social compulsion” of one person or group by another. This is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. In any family setting there is an enormous amount of social pressure to conform. If you work with others, you are probably going to be expected to dress and comport yourself in ways that do not always “suit one’s own desires” as you put it. Man is a social animal, and to be around other people is to be subject to their approval/disapproval, and also to subject them to yours. Your comments on this thread comparing opponents of gay marriage to supporters of slavery or the divine right of kings are not meant, I assume, to convince through force of reason. (Unless you are a lot less skilled with reason than I think you are) Rather, these remarks of yours are intended to exert “social compulsion” on others. The opponents of gay marriage are to be threatened with exclusion from the ranks of the “rational” and of the “right thinking people”. Unlike you, I am not going to say that it is immoral or unjust of you to do this kind of thing. I think it is very human of you. But I’m unpersuaded by it.
In attempting to curtail peoples natural tendency to exert social pressure on others, the “social liberals” have taken a sledgehammer to a lot of very important freedoms. They have also appointed themselves arbiters of what is good and bad, a position that I no more trust them in than the religious types that they are so exercised about. (I guess they don’t like the competition)
The end result of trying to get the kind of minority rights you desire is to adapt the position of the Democratic party, and to favor the idea of group rights which supersede those of individuals.
Reason
Reason is a means to an end, a tool. It cannot make value judgments. If you want to feed a million people, reason can tell you the most expedient way if doing it. If you want to kill a million people, reason can tell you the most efficient way of doing that, too. Reason itself is quite indifferent as to which is more desirable. I don’t see how an appeal to pure reason can get you to gay marriage. And since you end up instead appealing to the views of some guys who died a few hundred years ago, I suppose you can’t see it either. You darn traditionalist. In any case, their ideas do not support the propositions you are trying to build on them.
PS
It seems to me that this particular thread on the issue has a better light to heat ratio than normal.
