[ExI] Same Sex Marriage (was Re: Call To Libertarians)

[Stefano Vaj]

2011/3/1 Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As a second best, I am all in favour of making the social norms
>> involved in marriage simply implode by allowing gay, incestuous,
>> chaste, pedophilic, poligynic, polyandric, group, post-mortem,
>> inter-species weddings. Nice ceremonies are not to be denied to
>> anybody.
>
> I had to read this a couple of times before I could respond. I have heard a
> similar "if we allow gay marriage the next thing will be pedophilia and
> bestiality" argument before, usually by fundamentalist Christians. Whether
> it was ironic or not (and I admit to sometimes having a hard time
> determining that on the 'net, as someone mentioned yesterday), I'll go out
> on a limb and say I'd also let every social norm associated with marriage
> implode as well, by sanctioning any union a person wanted to make, *as long*
> as it was with another consenting adult or adults. That rules out pedophilia
> and bestiality and necrophilia.

No, I was not being ironic. After all, most of your objections
automatically go away once one considers that nothing prevents a
marriage to be chaste (even catholics admit that the spouses may even
take such a vow during the ceremony or later on, and nothing prevents
criminal sanctions of unlawful intercourse - see rape, for instance -
in spite of marriage). Liberalisation of underage or inter-species or
incestuous sex is therefore an altogether different matter: it may
take place without automatically grant access to marriage, and access
to marriage does not automatically involve it, not even between
spouses.

Moreover, post-mortem marriage does not refer to the necrophilia, but
the ability of, say, a betrothed girl to get married with a dead
soldier when he had expressed an explicit enough intention to this
effect prior to his death (this used to be possible under German law,
e.g.).

Ultimately, as to the access of special marriage-related treatments,
if abolishing them does not sound politically correct enough, we might
abolish instead the discrimination against the people who would like
to get marry with themselves - and remain forever loyal to their
beloved... :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj