Due in part to the federa;l Supreme Court's (IMHO correct, although
possibly for the wrong reasons) decision that states may not ban
homosexual sodomy, and to a case currently before the Massachusetts
Supreme Court, the issue of homosexual marriage has come to the fore.
It's argued that it's not right that heterosexual couples may have their
unions blessed by the State and thereby receive many benefits, and thus
that homosexual couples should have the same ability.
The antecedent is true enough, but the consequent doesn't follow: the
argument is a non sequitur. Really, the State
has no business interfering in consensual religious matters—and
what can be more a religious affair than the union of a man and a woman?
Why must every minister of every religion be compelled to become an
officer of the State in order to perform marriages? The legal and moral
realms are and must be separated: the law deals with what is permissible
(all conduct which does not interfere with another's rights), while
morality deals with what is right—they are overlapping but
disjoint sets.
One can easily imagine activities which should be legal and are
moral, e.g. eating lettuce, and activities which should be illegal and
are immoral, e.g. rape. Likewise activities which should be legal but
are immoral, e.g. extramarital sex. It's hard to imagine activities
which should not be legal but are moral, but one could argue that
hunting down and killing the murderer of one's children, while a moral
act, should be illegal. We simply cannot agree on what is
right; each of us has his own definition thereof. To attempt
to impose a regimen of rectitude would lead to the injustices of the
Wars of Religion in Europe and of sharia rule in
the Mohammedan countries. OTOH, we can mostly agree on what infringes
upon the rights of others: harm to one's physical person; harm to one's
property; fraud &c. There are grey areas such as
endangerment—while most of us would agree that firing a weapon
into a crowd can be legitimately termed a crime, not nearly so many
would agree that, say, storing explosives on one's property is (think a
propane grill…).
Rather than enforcing a régime of homosexual marriage
,
the State should get out of the marriage business together. Marriage is
a union of husband and wife—that's a religious matter. It's a
contract between a man and a woman—that's a civil matter, dealt
with reasonably enough by contract law. What it is not is a legal
matter. The state should not care if a woman marries a man or a woman
marries a woman any more than it cares if the Bashi-bazook of
Indianapolis wears purple vestments for the Festival of Much Wailing or
not.
I should note that I believe that homosexuality is sinful, unnatural
and grotesque. How could any man not love women? It's quite baffling.
In my view, that affliction probably a kind of congenital mental
illness. But the simple fact that Bob Uhl does not approve of a
behaviour does not mean that it should be punished—I don't approve
of men who wear shorts, people who use Window™, suntans, rap music
and teetotallers, either. The only things which should be punished by
the State are violations of others. The State should only regulate
those things which are related thereto. To argue otherwise is, in the
end, to argue for a tyranny of the majority, in which any behaviour
sufficiently disapproved of becomes forbidden and any behaviour
sufficiently approved of becomes de rigeur. If
we ban something we dislike which infringes no-one's rights,
how can we castigate the Arabs for forbidding the Bible? If we mandate
something we like, how can we castigate the Africans for their barbaric
and evil practise of mutilating girls? The answer is that we could not,
for it would simply be an argument of one worldview against
another—and while we could win the day, we might not.
We need to get the State out of people's private lives entirely.
Private life is not suitable matter for public legislation.
