Friday, February 25, 2011

Emes Ve-Emunah and the Horrors of a Libertarian Society

Baruch Pelta just sent me a recent post by Emes Ve-Emunah on the issue of gay marriage. It is a pretty good piece attempting to balance a principled opposition to gay marriage with an honest caring for individual homosexuals. Then at the end he drops this bit of wisdom.

The ultimate libertarian ideal is to make no value judgment at all placed on any behavior that is private and among consenting adults. As long as you do not hurt or force yourslef on others – who cares what goes on in the bedroom? Sex between siblings – if they agree - why not? Mother-son, father–daughter? …as long as they are adults and agree, why stop them? Do we as a nation really want to go down that path? Without the bible what possible objection could one have?

Do we want to go down this path? Why not? If people wish to not live under biblical principles and violate every sexual taboo in Leviticus why should it be my problem that I should risk my life and liberty threatining them with government sanctioned coercion, inviting them to retaliate in kind? I accept the Constitution, not the Bible, as the basis for our legal system. So yes I have no possible objection. (See Religious Choices.)

2 comments:

Baruch Pelta said...

Thanks for the hat tip. FTR I didn't like the piece at all and I've sent in a short comment to Emes Ve-Emunah to that effect.

Mikewind Dale (Michael Makovi) said...

I say just abolish marriage altogether, as an institution. Just reduce it to contract.

In Europe, we had the wars of religion. Thomas Hobbes said that every government had to ensure that only ONE religion survived within its borders. John Locke said that the government should just stop trying to enforce religion, and separate church and state, and that thereby, the wars of religion would cease. If everyone is warring over which religion the government should endorse, then just stop having the government endorse any religion at all, and the wars will stop, he said. And you know what? Locke was right.

So too with marriage.