Via Sebastian Holsclaw at Obsidian Wings comes this link to Jane Galt's argument that the externalities of allowing gay marriage might form enough of a net societal negative to justify society banning gay marriage:
To which, again, the other side replies "That's ridiculous! I would never change my willingness to get married based on whether or not gay people were getting married!"
Now, economists hear this sort of argument all the time. "That's ridiculous! I would never start working fewer hours because my taxes went up!" This ignores the fact that you may not be the marginal case. The marginal case may be some consultant who just can't justify sacrificing valuable leisure for a new project when he's only making 60 cents on the dollar. The result will nonetheless be the same: less economic activity. Similarly, you--highly educated, firmly socialised, upper middle class you--may not be the marginal marriage candidate; it may be some high school dropout in Tuscaloosa. That doesn't mean that the institution of marriage won't be weakened in America just the same.
(Snip)
This should not be taken as an endorsement of the idea that gay marriage will weaken the current institution. I can tell a plausible story where it does; I can tell a plausible story where it doesn't. I have no idea which one is true. That is why I have no opinion on gay marriage, and am not planning to develop one. Marriage is a big institution; too big for me to feel I have a successful handle on it.
(Snip)
My only request is that people try to be a leeetle more humble about their ability to imagine the subtle results of big policy changes. The argument that gay marriage will not change the institution of marriage because you can't imagine it changing your personal reaction is pretty arrogant. It imagines, first of all, that your behavior is a guide for the behavior of everyone else in society, when in fact, as you may have noticed, all sorts of different people react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways, which is why we have to have elections and stuff. And second, the unwavering belief that the only reason that marriage, always and everywhere, is a male-female institution (I exclude rare ritual behaviors), is just some sort of bizarre historical coincidence, and that you know better, needs examining. If you think you know why marriage is male-female, and why that's either outdated because of all the ways in which reproduction has lately changed, or was a bad reason to start with, then you are in a good place to advocate reform. If you think that marriage is just that way because our ancestors were all a bunch of repressed bastards with dark Freudian complexes that made them homophobic bigots, I'm a little leery of letting you muck around with it.
I'm not sure I buy this, but I thought this was the best defense of the status quo that I had seen. At least this makes some sort of plausible connection between gay marriage and a net-societal negative. How plausible this is remains debateable.
My initial response is that, while certainly society has the right to regulate private conduct that has public effects (hence the right to prevent me owning nuclear weapons or, more controversially, prevent me taking heroin - both of those private actions are likely to have public effects), this is not an overwhelming right. Not all private actions with public effects are regulateable: if I collect stamps, that effects what I spend money on, which is a public effect, but no one would realistically argue that I shouldn't be allowed to collect stamps (or, the stamps I collect should be regulated). Ms. Galt would need to demonstrate that the externalities of gay marriage are enough of a negative effect on society to outweight the obvious negatives of preventing citizens from marrying whom they want. I'm not saying she can't, I'm just arguing that it's a very high hurdle (especially for a libertarian).
Never the less, this is the most logical defense of the ban I have seen.
Posted by baltar at April 5, 2005 12:12 PM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsI assume here that the right of society to regulate private conduct having public effects based upon their negative externalities (and limited to regulations designed to curb these) is a notional right -- one on behalf of which you'd advocate -- and not a statement of the federal government's actual legal abilities to so regulate.
After all, if the feds can regulate my growth of wheat in my backyard under the Commerce Clause, they can *certainly* regulate my stamp collecting quite extensively (even absent a showing that my stamp collecting negatively affects others) pursuant to Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 7.
Maybe just a bad example ... but I'm a little confused here as to whether you're arguing from legal rights or some form of natural (or proposed political) rights.
Posted by: arbitransom at April 6, 2005 03:59 PM | PERMALINKI'm not really arguing anything. I found the Jane Galt quote (via Obsidian Wings), and thought it was the best defense yet put forward for the social conservative position. I don't agree with it, but at least it makes a plausible claim to link legal gay marriage to a net societal negative: the externalities of how gay marriage would effect (affect?) traditional marriage. In a sense this changes (at least for me) the debate from "It's a private issue, and the government shouldn't have any say one way or the other" to "At what point does private conduct become regulatable, and how much externalities are their from gay marriage." My original position left no room for debate (because the social conservatives couched it in an illogical manner), but this formulation at least allows for the two sides to engage each other. It should, one hopes, produce a better debate.
In other words, the debate (again, at least for me) moved from "taste great" versus "less filling" (an argument that not only can't be won, but an argument where the two sides can't even speak coherently to each other) to "how do we measure taste, and who decides what filling is". That's a better overall position.
Posted by: baltar at April 6, 2005 10:40 PM | PERMALINKThanks for the clarification, baltar. I certainly agree with your comments about the nature of the argument. A next step might be to ask whether there are partiuclar kinds of arguments or support for arguments that tend more quickly than others to devolve into tastes great/less filling disputes. This might, for instance lead to that time-honored conclusion (again) that religion and politics mix, if at all, into toxicity.
And yet they are destined to meet, again and again ...
Posted by: arbitransom at April 7, 2005 09:10 AM | PERMALINKI'll grant that religion and politics tend to be toxic, but that doesn't mean we can (or should) ignore them. In the same way that monumental awfulness has been done in the name of religion unrestrained by political checks and balances, there are also cases of political awfulness unrestrained by religious morality. It's a very tough line to walk: people's freedom to worship how they want and societies freedom to choose rational, unbiased (non-specific to any religion) political policies. The two cross over all the time.
Posted by: baltar at April 7, 2005 09:24 AM | PERMALINKPoints taken.
I guess what I'm saying is that useful political discourse (light not heat) depends on willingness to listen. And when religion gets into the mix, you have one or more sides of a discussion rendered essentially unconvinceable, to the extent that their religious positions are considered infallible, and immutable.
Thus, tastes great/less filling. No argument I make about the need to structure society such that everyone is free to do what they will so long as it does not harm others -- a quick-and-dirty way of putting the libertarian position -- loses as against a believer whose political will is that everyone conform to the tenets of his or her religion.
Try sometime explaining to a fundamentalist Christian that America is not "a Christian nation," which constitutionally it is not. Try doing this in Alabama. See how long it takes before you reach "is too/is not."
Posted by: arbitransom at April 7, 2005 11:36 AM | PERMALINKYeah, that aspect of religion and politics is certainly true. But I admit my bias: rational discussions with strongly religious people rarely end up anywhere except "tastes great/less filling". Of course, they may see my position as inherently illogical (given their worldview).
You may be right: offering this more logical framework for the gay marriage debate may not be enough to cool the shouting across lines drawn in the sand.
Posted by: baltar at April 7, 2005 02:04 PM | PERMALINK