Ban Marriage Today!
Not gay marriage. Marriage for anybody -- in its current form, as a series of state-dispensed entitlements. I'm with Rishawn Biddle, who writes:

Traditionally, heterosexual married couples have never been entitled to special treatment by governments. But now they're as much a burden on single taxpayers as welfare mothers and corporations on the dole. Why should married couples get special tax privileges or force businesses to extend health care benefits?

Then consider the social havoc heterosexual marriages have wreaked upon society, including the damage to children that comes from infidelity and custody battles. Or how it affects one's right to dole out property upon death.

It's time to put marriage back in its place in the private realm, where it belongs. It would also be nice for anti-gay marriage types to admit their real problem is with the very existence of homosexuality itself, which they consider an abomination. The candor would be refreshing.

He's right. To see a particularly hateful bit of spew on this, check out the comments section under a blog entry from last week (scroll down for an author posted by Jesse McKay). I'm reposting this here because I think it's better to put this hateful and backward thinking out in the open so it can be disputed.

Oh, and to counter just a bit of Jesse's ugliness before I get back to my deadline, I know a few gay parents, and their lives are just as boring, pedestrian, and undersexed as all the hetero parents I know. (So sorry to disappoint those like Jesse, who think they're leaving the kids home with the dog and running up and down the boulevards of West Hollywood in leather shorts and spiked dog collars.)

Finally, here's a rational argument that echoes Rishawn's from the blogger USS Clueless -- a non-fundamentalist, non-homophobe with a pretty good brain cuddled up in his skull:

I am a "Conservative" because I am a classical liberal. I believe in liberating people from unnecessary limits imposed by government or society. My basic view of law is strongly oriented towards the principle of "law of right" over "law of good". I oppose laws which try to enforce "good", and I oppose laws which meddle just for the sake of meddling. We choose to make some kinds of decisions collectively, and we choose to let individuals make other decisions for themselves. Liberals favor letting individuals make such decisions, and only favor collective decisions if the benefit is strong enough to offset the axiomatic harm of reducing liberty for individuals.

I argue that in this case we should not collectively decide whether gays should be permitted to marry other gays. I argue that the choice of whom to marry is one we should permit each adult to make for themselves.

We as a society, have reached consensus that it is none of society's business what sexual practices consenting adults engage in behind closed doors, and I assume Rich agrees with that. I claim that gay marriage is no different. (I consider it unimportant that government clerks issue the marriage licenses.)

The true measure of civil liberties is the extent to which each of us can scandalize our neighbors without landing in prison. In other words, in general the more ability we have to make decisions for ourselves without concern for how others will react, the more free we are. (See above about "generalizations" and "exceptions".)

Prudence Prim would certainly be scandalized if she knew what Gary Gay-and-Proud and Quincy Queer do with each other when they get horny, but we as a society pretty much have reached a consensus that it isn't any of her business as long as they keep it behind closed doors. Her discomfort is the price she pays for her liberty. She chows down on a big steak every Sunday night, and in turn doesn't have to worry about how Vegans Gary and Quincy feel about that.

Prudence would also be scandalized if Gary and Quincy got married. But I don't consider that sufficient justification for forbidding their marriage. Nor have I found any other arguments about consequences sufficiently compelling to justify abridging their liberty in this regard.

Where can we get more like this guy?