Same-sex marriage? Yes, in the Gay White North!
Well Canada's going to allow same-sex marriage. Some people are mad about this.
I say: so what. Big deal. In fact, great. It ain't the government's business who I'm married to, so long as that person is a consenting adult too. (So despite some congressmen's worst fears, gay marriage does not mean opening the door to such things as, say, incest, as children are, by definition, not consenting adults.)
Yes, it's "unnatural," physically speaking. But it ain't your right to tell me I can't do it. It's also unnatural for us to do all sorts of things, such as ingest alcohol and drive cars and communicate instantaneously to other parts of the planet. So on what principle can you legitimately oppose this? It's just one more freedom that our citizens should have -- regardless of what the majority may think.
This country was set up not so a majority could rule and implement its beliefs about the world upon the minority. It was set up explicitly so that the people were respected as individuals, and that the majority would in fact not have the power to impose rules upon them.
I wish the GOP'ers who are most vocal about this would recognize themselves for the social engineers that they are. They do a good enough job of decrying the efforts to coerce behavior at the expense of personal freedom on the other side of the aisle; it ain't any different when you're trying to prohibit people from straying from the already-adopted behavior. That merely makes your position "conservative" in the strictest sense of the word; it implies nothing about principle other than that the status quo should be preserved.
Politically, I believe in the supremacy of individual freedom, each person acting in his or her rational self-interest -- above all else. (No, I'm not an anarchist; if you really want an explanation, stomp your feet in the comments.) And that dedication to liberty means that yes, for the sake of that principle, we must allow others to do things that we personally me might find repugnant, so long as it doesn't physically harm anyone else. We ought to be glad that we have people fighting for this kind of thing -- they're constantly making the rest of us evaluate and reevaluate just what we're supposed to be all about in this country.
It ain't the government's business. And that's that.
Oh, and for the record, I'm not gay. I'm very much straight. And available. ;)
Posted by Matt at June 20, 2003 8:24 PM
