Why Would Proponents Of Limited Government Be Happy About North Carolina Banning Gay Marriage?
Not all the results are in yet as I type this, but an amendment to the state constitution in North Carolina banning gay marriage and prohibiting legal recognition of unwed couples looks like it will pass by a wide margin.
Conservatives on Twitter and other social media seem almost uniformly happy about the outcome, though I can’t imagine why.
Conservatism is about believing in limited government. So how is the government defining marriage in keeping with that notion? I thought conservatives wanted the government out of their personal lives. Yet social conservatives seem just fine with forcing their personal views on marriage down the collective throats of society at large.
I don’t think this sort of policy (note that it impacts both homosexuals and straights) has anything to do with liberty or individualism. In fact, I think this sort of policy has a lot in common with the sort of top-down micromanagement of our lives that our friends on the left favor.
Defining, with the law, what marriage is to consenting adults isn’t all that different than defining, with law, what sort of food we can eat. Or what sort of health insurance we can buy. It’s all about removing choice from the individual. There are some choices we shouldn’t get to make – stealing and murder, etc. – but gay marriage isn’t in those categories.
I’m not saying that we all have to condone homosexuality, any more then healthy living advocates should have to condone McDonald’s, but we should support the liberty to make choices for ourselves.
I think the government should stay out of our churches and our bedrooms.
Tags: gay marriage, north carolina
