Interesting Things to Watch

Howdy, y'all. I just figured I should direct your attention to two conversations that have caught my interest recently, and which may be interesting to some of you as well.

Over at the Austro-Athenian Empire blog, Dr. Long has posted a discussion of the proper definition of "socialism," entitled "POOTMOP Redux!" (after an older post, "Pootmop!," in which he discussed private ownership of the means of production -- p.o.o.t.m.o.p.). If you want some background on the post, read Kevin Carson's initial contribution to the discussion, "Socialism: A Perfectly Good Word Rehabilitated," and Stephen Kinsella's response, "The New Libertarianism: Anti-Capitalistic and Socialist." I should point out for the time-starved, however, that Dr. Long's post is probably just fine on its own.

I've posted a fair amount in the comments section of the post, and Neverfox of Instead of a Blog has jumped in as well. Of interest as well may be Dr. Chartier's thoughtful contribution on the LiberaLaw blog, "Socialism Revisited," as well as Brainpolice's commentary on the Polycentric Order blog, "Anarchist and Socialist Semantics and Historicity (Or, Why Does Stephan Kinsella Act As If Individualist Anarchism Never Existed? Redux)."

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The other interesting conversation going on at the moment is a new chapter in the debate over state involvement in marriage, this time with a post on the ThinkMarkets blog by Dr. Rizzo, "What Should Be The State’s Role In Marriage?." The time scale for this discussion is a bit longer than that for the previous one. For me, it started with an overconfident post on this blog last year, now-amusingly entitled, "Open and Shut: Should Same-Sex Marriage Be Legal?" In it, I argued that the state should get out of marriage entirely in order to avoid a choice between discrimination and offending religious groups who I took to have some legitimate claim to the institution of "marriage." (That post, incidentally, marked the one and only time that this blog has ever been linked to on The Huffington Post. Go figure.)

A few months later, Dr. Koppl posted his own discussion of the issue over at the ThinkMarkets blog, "Ideas Have Consequences," in which he argued that gay marriage should be legalized. In the comments section of that post, we had what I found to be an incredibly productive conversation in which he convinced me that the religious groups in question really did not have the kind of claim to the institution of marriage that I had attributed to them, and that having a legal understanding of "marriage" was quite valuable. I accordingly posted a follow-up on this blog in which I conceded the argument to Dr. Koppl, entitled, "Roger Koppl Is Right About Gay Marriage."

Dr. Rizzo's point intriguingly takes up the banner for the sort of position I initially defended, arguing that the government ought to get out of defining marriage altogether. In the comments section, I tried to draw attention to the conversation that had already taken place on the blog earlier this year, and eventually Dr. Koppl himself arrived on the scene to defend his position again. Gene Callahan of Crash Landing, the (now willfully abandoned!) Morality Debate, chance meetings at AIER, etc., has also joined in the discussion. This should be good!

Roger Koppl Is Right About Gay Marriage

So a few months ago, I rather vocally proclaimed that when it came to the controversial issue of gay marriage, the answer was obviously that the government should eliminate its involvement in the issue altogether, since marriage is apparently a sacred institution which should have nothing to do with the government. I argued that homosexual couples should neither be legally recognized as married nor denied such recognition, but rather that the government should recognize all couples we currently think of as "married" by a different name. That way, marriage could be protected from redefinition like the religious conservatives want it to be, and no institutionalized discrimination would be perpetuated.

In spite of how clearly right I took that position to be at the time, and until just now, I have become convinced that I was wrong. I wanted to publicly acknowledge my change in opinion, in order to offer what I take to be a compelling argument in favor of the legalization of gay marriage.

That argument was offered by Dr. Roger Koppl in a discussion in the comments section of one of his posts on the ThinkMarkets blog. He point out that:

...they [religious conservatives] never objected to secular unions or calling such secular unions marriages. They are not defending marriage. They are expressing their (supposed!) moral objections to homosexuality. Why should we cow to that? Again, to protect their delicate sensibilities? No way! Certainly not given their failure to object to secular unions or the legal recognition of secular unions [as marriages].

I think that Dr. Koppl is right about this. I reproduce from my response to the post:

You do make a good point...in noting that the characterization of secular unions as “marriages” was never a matter of public outcry. I think you might be right, then, in suggesting that if there was going to be an objection to the liberalization of marriage, and its decoupling from the religious institution of the same name, then that objection should have been raised long ago. In other words, that a sort of statute of limitations applies here, and given the longstanding tradition of secular unions in this country, it might be fair to say that the window for objections has passed.

What was wrong with my previous position, then, is that I had granted to the conservatives the sacred status of marriage as currently defined, when in fact that status cannot be sustained in light of the well-established acceptance of secular unions as marriages in our country. If secular unions are unobjectionably "marriages," then it seems to follow that there is nothing necessarily sacred about marriage. And if secular unions fall within the established meaning of "marriage," I think it's pretty reasonable to think that the extension of the meaning to include gay marriages would be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. After all, a secular union really is just a certain kind of contract, and forbidding homosexual couples from obtaining such a contractual relationship seems clearly unfair.

So hopefully that makes sense; thanks to Dr. Koppl for taking the time to discuss it with me!

Open and Shut: Should Same-Sex Marriage Be Legal?

Update:

Despite the rather confident tone in which I wrote this article, I now believe that I was incorrect. Please see my followup post here.

A lot of the issues we deal with in political thinking are genuinely difficult, where no obvious answer presents itself, and controversy and disagreement are nearly inevitable. But same-sex marriage is not one of them. It is entirely inexcusable that this discussion has gone on as long as it has. Here is what I take to be the crux of the problem:

1) According to some people, marriage is a sacred institution, and its sacred status is somehow linked to homosexual couples not being allowed to be married.

2) In our country, marriage is not only a religious institution, but is a distinct legal status. The fact that this legal status is only available to heterosexual adults seems to be discriminatory to homosexuals. And institutionalized discrimination is contrary to our government's founding principles.

Oh heavens? What is to be done? Watch:

3) Our government is founded on the idea that church and state should remain separated. Because marriage is a sacred institution, the state should be barred from being involved with it in any capacity. If the government wants to accord a special legal status to cohabiting parties to certain kinds of contracts, then fine. It can't be "marriage," because that's a sacred institution. It would be like according a special status to people who have been Bar Mitzvah-ed. Not allowed.

See how easy that was? Good. Now we can all go home.