The New York State legislature has just legalized gay marriage in New York.
For the libertarian reasons I’ve outlined here and here, I don’t think this is the optimal way to address the issue of marriage inequality; it takes a set of special government preferences (for heterosexual married couples) and extends those benefits to a wider group of people (heterosexual and homosexual married couples), while leaving enormous pools of people short of the benefits (single people, people who prefer polygamy, and the huge and growing group of long-term monogamous cohibatators).
It’s kind of like if the civil rights act had said “no discrimination against blacks” instead of “no discrimination on account of race.” Not a bad thing, by any means, but hardly a statement of universal equality on the issue of human sexual relationships. More after the jump.
I believe the only legitimate solution to this is to completely decouple marriage and the state. In other words, abolish all state benefits for any marriage, — gay, straight, polygamous, or otherwise. Anything short of that leaves in place a system in which the state preferences, incentivizes, and legitimates some human relationships over others. Human sexual relationships exist prior to the state, and the state has no business promoting some and not others.
My brother-in-law and his girlfriend live virtually the exact same lifestyle my wife and I do, in all respects. Why we should have a myriad of financial government benefits that they lack, simply because we signed a piece of paper the state wrote, is a question that has no plausible legitimate answer. Allowing homosexuals to sign that same paper is certainly benevolent, but hardly equal.
I respect your views on this topic a great deal (and consider your post on 8/10/10 to be one of the most thoughtful and persuasive things I’ve read on it).
But the more I think about it, the more there seems to be a deep tension between this libertarian approach and democratic principles (or at least democratic processes in the US). This was a majoritarian process/outcome: 58% of New Yorkers support same-sex marriage; it was passed by majorities in both houses of the legislature and signed by a governor who campaigned on the issue. You must be more of a critic of democracy (or at least majoritarianism) than I had thought! (Though I may be missing something here, as I can think of several issues on which I know you are very pro-democracy and even more issues on which I know you favor legislative supremacy.)
To be sure, there are moral arguments against (bad) outcomes that result from democratic processes (see Jim Crow laws). And there are procedural arguments that hold weight, too. But yours is neither a moral nor a procedural critique of democracy — it doesn’t really deal with the “problem of democracy” at all.
The other problem with your solution, at least as I see it, is its utter impracticality. Marriage is so deeply rooted in so many social and governmental institutions — federal, state, private business, etc. — that this “downward equalization” solution, as attractive as it sounds, is ultimately frustrating, and not really a solution at all.
To my mind, libertarian arguments will be much stronger to the extent that they engage more with political and institutional realities. And it wouldn’t hurt to offer some sort of defense of the anti-democratic nature of the prescriptions offered.
On second thought, I backtrack — of course it’s not anti-democratic to conceive of an ideal policy outcome; you’re proposing a logically consistent solution to a problem, but that doesn’t mean you’re skeptical of democratic processes in general, or in this case in particular. Of course you’d acknowledge the need to convince others of your argument.
The main thing I want, then, is just more discussion of how you actually implement the plan; how you sell the plan in the political arena, given current alignments; and how you legitimize your argument in this “social movement” context (where you have some serious democratic arguments being made, both for and against same-sex marriage).
Dan:
Thanks for the comments. I’d say a few things:
1) Marriage is an incredibly old human institution, and undoubtedly the most deeply rooted one in human society. But the government benefits associated with marriage are all relatively new. Most didn’t exist prior to the 20th century. Virtually none existed prior to the 19th. Anyone who died a British subject in North America would be dumbfounded at our state system of marriage.
2) Things change quick. Certainly I’m working more in the realm of political theory than practical politics, but so was Andrew Sullivan when he put gay marriage on the cover of the The New Republic. In 1989. Any argument one makes about the practical implausibility of legitimating polygamy these days has to grapple with the fact that gay marriage was in the same boat less than 25 years ago. And desegregation was an absolute dead letter before WW2, just 25 years before it became a universal norm.
3) I wouldn’t characterize my strategy as complete “downward” equalization. I’m not talking about purely taking away all the benefits; certainly some of them would have to outright go (like tax breaks), but in other cases, I’d just like to make sure that the benefit (such as hospital visitation) is universal, and not decided on a marital status case. Most private hospitals already are close to this (allowing single people to nominate one person who can have 24 hour visitation), but not all. That should change.
4) I do think my “quick solution” of just complete decoupling of marriage and the state is not practical. But the good news is that things can be done one benefit at a time. Let me give you a no-brainer place to start: spousal pension benefits for state workers.
Right now, in New York State, if you are a married state employee, when you retire and you are eligible for a pension, you get a one time choice between a larger pension that continues until you die, or a smaller pension that continues until both you AND your spouse die. Single people (even long-term cohabitators) are not eligible for the latter option. (I assume starting next month that married gays will be eligible; stuff this is precisely what the gay marriage fight, at a practical level, were over). That seems unfair to me. Why should single people not be allowed to elect one other individual and take the smaller pension?
Now here’s the kicker: election of the spousal benefit pension actually saves the state money. As it turns out, taking the smaller pension that continues until both partners die actually reduces the amount of money paid over the average pension lifetime. So, if the state were to open up the “spousal” benefit pension to everyone, the state would save money every time someone chose it.
I can’t think of a bigger no-brainer than that: expanding benefits to be inclusive of everyone, and saving public money.
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