Hayek And Rauch On Gay Marriage
First, we have Hayek, as detailed by Rauch, author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, in a piece in Reason magazine:
...There are times, Hayek said (in Law, Legislation, and Liberty), when what he called "grown law" requires correction by legislation. "It may be due simply to the recognition that some past development was based on error or that it produced consequences later recognized as unjust," he wrote. "But the most frequent cause is probably that the development of the law has lain in the hands of members of a particular class whose traditional views made them regard as just what could not meet the more general requirements of justice....Such occasions when it is recognized that some hereto accepted rules are unjust in the light of more general principles of justice may well require the revision not only of single rules but of whole sections of the established system of case law."
Then there's Rauch on Hayek:
That passage, I think, could have been written with gay marriage in mind. The old view that homosexuals were heterosexuals who needed punishment or prayer or treatment has been exposed as an error. What homosexuals need is the love of another homosexual. The ban on same-sex marriage, hallowed though it is, no longer accords with liberal justice or the meaning of marriage as it is practiced today. Something has to give. Standing still is not an option.
This neatly highlights the difference between libertarians and both liberals and conservatives.
Liberals and conservatives both want the law to dictate from the top down, each with their own ideals. So society should reflect government.
Libertarians think law should reflect and codify society, so it's the other way around: government should reflect society.
Todd Fletcher at December 1, 2005 11:19 AM
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