"The Libertarian Question"

A good column today by Stanley Kurtz at NRO:

There is a mystery at the heart of the gay-marriage debate. I call it the "libertarian question." The libertarian question (really a series of questions) goes like this: Why should any form of adult consensual sex be illegal? What rational or compelling interest does the state have in regulating consensual adult sex? More specifically, how does the marriage of two gay men undermine my marriage? Will the fact that two married gay men live next door make me leave my wife? Hardly. So how, then, does gay marriage undermine heterosexual marriage? Why not get the state out of such matters altogether?

The libertarian question is mysterious because, in modern society, we find it difficult to understand the continuing necessity of shared moral standards — and of collective taboos against actions that violate those standards. Traditional societies depend on shared moral sentiments and collective taboos. Modern democracies, for the most part, have rejected these forms of collective morality in favor of an emphasis on personal freedom. Yet the truth is, although their workings are mysterious to us, shared moral codes (and a structure of taboos that guards those codes) can never be entirely dispensed with....

So the mere social statement that marriage does not mean monogamy is where the real danger of legalized gay-marriage and polyamory lie. And the collapse of consensus about shared social institutions really does effect us as individuals. Once we as a society no longer take it for granted that marriage means monogamy, you may not decide to leave your wife. But you may be more likely to give in to the temptation of an affair. And that could mean the end of your marriage, whether that's what you wanted going into the affair or not. (For another way of looking at this problem, see my, "Code of Honor," where I compare the operation of the taboo against adultery to the working of a college's anti-cheating honor code.)

As with the taboos on incest and sodomy, society can't enforce the taboo on adultery with laws. Laws on matters of sexual conduct do make a difference, but less as enforcement mechanisms than as embodiments of common values. Precisely because the state cannot monitor and prosecute adultery, society writes a taboo against the practice into our hearts. The laws of marriage as currently constituted embody and express that taboo. Transform those laws, and the taboo will disappear.

The ongoing need for shared social understandings on matters pertaining to the family and sexuality does not fit neatly into the libertarian playbook. Social and sexual taboos are the stuff of traditional societies. But the truth is, so long as we live, not merely as isolated individuals, but in families together, we shall be in need of social and sexual taboos.

If the controversy over Senator Rick Santorum's remarks has made it possible to openly discuss the real basis of our shared social and sexual understandings, then it will have done some good. Unlike Sen. Santorum, I would rather accept some disruption in family stability than go back to the days when homosexuality itself was deeply tabooed. The increase in freedom and fairness is worth it. Yet there has been a terrible social cost for the changes of the sixties. We need to mitigate those costs. And we certainly do not need to risk the destruction of an already weakened family system by radically undermining the ethos of monogamy.

Gay marriage would set in motion a series of threats to the ethos of monogamy from which the institution of marriage may never recover. Yet up to now, our society has been unable to face the real costs and consequences of the proposed change. That is partly because of an understandable sympathy for the gay-rights movement. But it also reflects the sheer inability of modern folk to grasp the operation, necessity — or even the existence — of the system of moral consensus and prohibition upon which society itself depends.

Kurtz has quite a portfolio of essays on "gay" "marriage". When I get around to it, I'll blog the ones I've saved.

(Thanks, Stanley.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Wed. 04/30/03 11:56:10 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.