Monday, March 07, 2005
Kip Esquire on Gay "Marriage" and Polygamy
On his blog, lawyer Kip Esquire writes:
I agree, except for the following minor emendations:
Herein lies the (not at all difficult) distinction between...marriage and [gay "marriage"]. Marriage by its nature qua legal status must, in a modern society, be limited to [one man and one woman]. A hypothetical..."marriage" [sans mores maiorum and Natural Law (as is necessarily the case with gay "marriage")] might be feasible in some hypothetical libertarian [anarcho-syndicate]. But that is not marriage as it exists, legally, in America today. The only way to validate "[gay] marriage" is to rewrite the fundamental definition, the fundamental nature, of marriage itself -- to blank out its nature as a legal status and replace it with some fictitious...[doppelgänger]. But to do so reduces the whole debate down to mere question-begging. Which is not helpful.
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Herein lies the (not at all difficult) distinction between same-sex marriage and polygamy. Marriage by its nature qua legal status must, in a modern society, be limited to two people. A hypothetical polygamous "marriage" qua bundle of hypothetical contracts might be feasible in some hypothetical libertarian utopia. But that is not marriage as it exists, legally, in America today. The only way to validate "polygamous marriage" is to rewrite the fundamental definition, the fundamental nature, of marriage itself -- to blank out its nature as a legal status and replace it with some fictitious "bundle of contracts" doppelgaenger. But to do so reduces the whole debate down to mere question-begging. Which is not helpful.
I agree, except for the following minor emendations:
Herein lies the (not at all difficult) distinction between...marriage and [gay "marriage"]. Marriage by its nature qua legal status must, in a modern society, be limited to [one man and one woman]. A hypothetical..."marriage" [sans mores maiorum and Natural Law (as is necessarily the case with gay "marriage")] might be feasible in some hypothetical libertarian [anarcho-syndicate]. But that is not marriage as it exists, legally, in America today. The only way to validate "[gay] marriage" is to rewrite the fundamental definition, the fundamental nature, of marriage itself -- to blank out its nature as a legal status and replace it with some fictitious...[doppelgänger]. But to do so reduces the whole debate down to mere question-begging. Which is not helpful.
# posted by O'Brien @ 3/07/2005 02:41:00 PM 
