The Rights of Others
Just two weeks after the state of New York became the sixth in the nation to guarantee marriage equality for all of its citizens, Iowan mouthbreather Robert Vander Plaats authored a draconian "Marriage Vow" (which suddenly, mysteriously, no longer includes the obscene clause claiming that "a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President"), which Republican presidential candidates are expected to sign if they want the support of Vander Plaats' organization, The Family Leader.
The nonsensical Vow outlines fourteen points that signees are expected to uphold, including mundane items like personal fidelity and adherence to the Constitution, more medieval measures like rejecting any relationship that does not fit the narrow category of heterosexual couplehood, supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (whose own author now rejects it and has been working to repeal it with the Respect for Marriage Act), and endorsement of a Federal Marriage Amendment, and outright absurdity like rejecting Sharia Islam, as if there were even an inkling of a possibility that any American politician would ever promote Islamic law (even Keith Ellison, Michele Bachmann's fellow Minnesotan Representative, who is a bona fide American Muslim, rejects Sharia as a public American policy).
Naturally, theocrats Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum practically leapt out of their respective pelts at the chance to endorse a document that encourages all manner of infringement on personal liberties. That was only to be expected; Bachmann thinks that the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in New Hampshire and that the Founding Fathers eradicated slavery in America, and Santorum recently criticized the Obama Administration for managing to create only 240-million jobs. These are two people only vaguely acquainted with reality to begin with. Getting the signatures of Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum on your document is no reason to celebrate; it's reason to reconsider your purpose in life and contributions to society.
So the announcement that these two particular wingnuts had signed up for this idiocy barely registered as news. It's nothing new for either of them, at least. What did catch my attention, on the other hand, was the announcement yesterday that Mitt Romney refused to sign, calling the Vow "undignified and inappropriate." Tim Pawlenty refused to sign, but then released this video, so I guess that's a wash. Herman Cain refused to sign. Even Newt Gingrich refused to sign, though he sort of had to considering the fact that he's cheated on at least two-thirds of his wives.
Don't get me wrong: I entertain no delusions about these men. I do not imagine that any of them has seen the folly of his antiquated, parochial ideology. All of them, in the process of rejecting the Vow itself, expressed some degree of agreement with its inequitable sentiments. All of them professed some kind of misguided allegiance to the concept of "traditional marriage," that, of course, being of the one-man-one-woman variety. All of them are men who believe that their own livestyle choices are objectively superior to all others, and also that they possess the authority to tell other people how to live.
I have written at length about the origin and scope of authority as it pertains to government. In short: it exists to preserve the rights of the people, which it has no power to limit. And the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1967 that "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival." Every person, by virtue of their very humanity and life, possesses the intrinsic "freedom of choice to marry." The government has absolutely no authority to restrict that natural human right, because to do so is to undermine the foundation of that very government. It is, in fact, for that government to become destructive of the ends for which it was instituted among the people.
For that reason, I was encouraged to learn about Gary Johnson's refusal to sign, calling the Vow "offensive to the principles of liberty and freedom on which this country was founded." Former Governor Johnson acknowledged the most self-evident truth that no one else seems willing to recognize: that the "government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults." And those final two words address the only questions relevant to the matter: whether everyone involved is an adult, and whether everyone involved consents to participate.
Any person in Congress is perfectly within his or her rights to hold the personal belief that homosexuality is "wrong," and also within his or her constitutional rights to proclaim that archaic belief. But no one in Congress nor Congress itself has the authority to codify that personal belief into public policy. It is not the right of any person to legally impose his own beliefs and lifestyle on others, and so it is not the right of the collection of persons in Congress to legally impose any of their shared beliefs in a way that would restrict the personal liberties of consenting adults.
Because it is consent that will forever separate homosexuality by parsecs from pedophilia or bestiality. Neither children nor animals can consent to the types of intimacy that adults can. But it is the natural right of adults to consent with other adults in their personal relationships, and when they do, it is an infringement of their personal freedom for outside parties to interfere.
Not content merely to condemn homosexuality, Robert Vander Plaats also denounces bigamy, polygamy, polyandry. And it is perhaps fitting that he does so, since they, like homosexuality, are matters of personal consent between adults. Just as it is the right of two men or two women to consent to intimacy with each other without interference, it is the also right of three or four or ten individuals to similarly consent with one another. And while it is Mr. Vander Plaats' right to air his antiquated opinion against the right of consenting adults to interact with one another freely as they choose, it is not his right, nor is it within the authority of government, to impose that opinion on others.
And yet, Mr. Vander Plaats betrays his own humanity when he behaves as if the rights of others should be supplanted by his opinion. In doing so, he treats the rights of others as alienable, negotiable, and optional. To treat the rights of others in such as way is to treat the rights of the individual, of all individuals, as transient and impermanent. And in his hard-hearted callousness, therefore, he undermines the validity of his own personal rights. Which is why, as Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1859, "those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."
Mr. Vander Plaats, Ms. Bachmann, Mr. Santorum, and in their own ways, Mr. Romney, Mr. Pawlenty, Mr. Cain, and Mr. Gingrich, all seek to deny the basic freedom of choice to marry to certain groups of consenting American adults. And it would follow, then, in the words of their own Republican forebear, that they do not deserve that freedom for themselves. I only wonder, then, if these postmodern Republicans envision themselves as the disciples of a just God.
Because if you don't want others telling you who you are allowed to marry, you damn well better not try to tell others who they are allowed to marry.
The nonsensical Vow outlines fourteen points that signees are expected to uphold, including mundane items like personal fidelity and adherence to the Constitution, more medieval measures like rejecting any relationship that does not fit the narrow category of heterosexual couplehood, supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (whose own author now rejects it and has been working to repeal it with the Respect for Marriage Act), and endorsement of a Federal Marriage Amendment, and outright absurdity like rejecting Sharia Islam, as if there were even an inkling of a possibility that any American politician would ever promote Islamic law (even Keith Ellison, Michele Bachmann's fellow Minnesotan Representative, who is a bona fide American Muslim, rejects Sharia as a public American policy).
Naturally, theocrats Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum practically leapt out of their respective pelts at the chance to endorse a document that encourages all manner of infringement on personal liberties. That was only to be expected; Bachmann thinks that the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought in New Hampshire and that the Founding Fathers eradicated slavery in America, and Santorum recently criticized the Obama Administration for managing to create only 240-million jobs. These are two people only vaguely acquainted with reality to begin with. Getting the signatures of Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum on your document is no reason to celebrate; it's reason to reconsider your purpose in life and contributions to society.
So the announcement that these two particular wingnuts had signed up for this idiocy barely registered as news. It's nothing new for either of them, at least. What did catch my attention, on the other hand, was the announcement yesterday that Mitt Romney refused to sign, calling the Vow "undignified and inappropriate." Tim Pawlenty refused to sign, but then released this video, so I guess that's a wash. Herman Cain refused to sign. Even Newt Gingrich refused to sign, though he sort of had to considering the fact that he's cheated on at least two-thirds of his wives.
Don't get me wrong: I entertain no delusions about these men. I do not imagine that any of them has seen the folly of his antiquated, parochial ideology. All of them, in the process of rejecting the Vow itself, expressed some degree of agreement with its inequitable sentiments. All of them professed some kind of misguided allegiance to the concept of "traditional marriage," that, of course, being of the one-man-one-woman variety. All of them are men who believe that their own livestyle choices are objectively superior to all others, and also that they possess the authority to tell other people how to live.
I have written at length about the origin and scope of authority as it pertains to government. In short: it exists to preserve the rights of the people, which it has no power to limit. And the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1967 that "Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival." Every person, by virtue of their very humanity and life, possesses the intrinsic "freedom of choice to marry." The government has absolutely no authority to restrict that natural human right, because to do so is to undermine the foundation of that very government. It is, in fact, for that government to become destructive of the ends for which it was instituted among the people.
For that reason, I was encouraged to learn about Gary Johnson's refusal to sign, calling the Vow "offensive to the principles of liberty and freedom on which this country was founded." Former Governor Johnson acknowledged the most self-evident truth that no one else seems willing to recognize: that the "government should not be involved in the bedrooms of consenting adults." And those final two words address the only questions relevant to the matter: whether everyone involved is an adult, and whether everyone involved consents to participate.
Any person in Congress is perfectly within his or her rights to hold the personal belief that homosexuality is "wrong," and also within his or her constitutional rights to proclaim that archaic belief. But no one in Congress nor Congress itself has the authority to codify that personal belief into public policy. It is not the right of any person to legally impose his own beliefs and lifestyle on others, and so it is not the right of the collection of persons in Congress to legally impose any of their shared beliefs in a way that would restrict the personal liberties of consenting adults.
Because it is consent that will forever separate homosexuality by parsecs from pedophilia or bestiality. Neither children nor animals can consent to the types of intimacy that adults can. But it is the natural right of adults to consent with other adults in their personal relationships, and when they do, it is an infringement of their personal freedom for outside parties to interfere.
Not content merely to condemn homosexuality, Robert Vander Plaats also denounces bigamy, polygamy, polyandry. And it is perhaps fitting that he does so, since they, like homosexuality, are matters of personal consent between adults. Just as it is the right of two men or two women to consent to intimacy with each other without interference, it is the also right of three or four or ten individuals to similarly consent with one another. And while it is Mr. Vander Plaats' right to air his antiquated opinion against the right of consenting adults to interact with one another freely as they choose, it is not his right, nor is it within the authority of government, to impose that opinion on others.
And yet, Mr. Vander Plaats betrays his own humanity when he behaves as if the rights of others should be supplanted by his opinion. In doing so, he treats the rights of others as alienable, negotiable, and optional. To treat the rights of others in such as way is to treat the rights of the individual, of all individuals, as transient and impermanent. And in his hard-hearted callousness, therefore, he undermines the validity of his own personal rights. Which is why, as Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1859, "those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."
Mr. Vander Plaats, Ms. Bachmann, Mr. Santorum, and in their own ways, Mr. Romney, Mr. Pawlenty, Mr. Cain, and Mr. Gingrich, all seek to deny the basic freedom of choice to marry to certain groups of consenting American adults. And it would follow, then, in the words of their own Republican forebear, that they do not deserve that freedom for themselves. I only wonder, then, if these postmodern Republicans envision themselves as the disciples of a just God.
Because if you don't want others telling you who you are allowed to marry, you damn well better not try to tell others who they are allowed to marry.