wbt@privacy.net writes:

Gay marriage 'rights'
Thomas Sowell (archive)

If Sowell wrote this garbage, he is an idiot.

In all the states where gay marriage was on the ballot this year, the
voters voted against it -- as they should have.

Reality - initiative campaigns are expensive. Most people who run them
get poll results first to make sure that they have a good chance of
winning. Otherwise you can literally throw millions of bucks down the
tubes in collecting signatures and advertising and have nothing to show
for it.

Of all the phony arguments for gay marriage, the phoniest is the
argument that it is a matter of equal rights. Marriage is not a right
extended to individuals by the government. It is a restriction on the
rights they already have.

Oh nonsense - nobody is arguing "for" individual gay marriages, but
rather for the right to marry when a couple chooses to. Only in
right-wing Orwellian doublespeak would a right be turned into a
"restriction."

People who are simply living together can make whatever arrangements
they want, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. They can
divide up their worldly belongings 50-50 or 90-10 or whatever other
way they want. They can make their union temporary or permanent or
subject to cancellation at any time.

But they cannot require a third party to recongize their arrangment.
They cannot require a hospital to grant the sort of visitation rights
married couples get as a matter of course because a contract between
A and B cannot place any obligation on C.

Marriage is a restriction. If my wife buys an automobile with her own
money, under California marriage laws I automatically own half of it,
whether or not my name is on the title.

If you don't like it, don't get married. Nobody is forcing you to
marry.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the life of the law is not logic but
experience. Marriage laws have evolved through centuries of experience
with couples of opposite sexes -- and the children that result from
such unions. Society asserts its stake in the decisions made by
restricting the couples' options.

This is an outright lie. Marriage in most of human history has been
between a man and as many spouses (usually female but in some cases
male) that he can support.

If you have a right to someone else's approval, then they do not have
a right to their own opinions and values.

Nobody cares about someone else's approval. They care about equal
rights. Marriage at one level is simply a standard contract that
everyone understands, but it also confers various rights and
responsibilities provided by the state.

Basically, if the Pope wants to sit there and genuflect, and pronounce
right from wrong, as far as I'm concerned he can genuflect away. Why
should I care? He's in Rome and I'm in California. Let the Romans deal
with him.

You cannot say that what "consenting adults" do in private is nobody
else's business and then turn around and say that others are bound
to put their seal of approval on it.

Except nobody is saying that. You can wag your tongue at gay couples
all you want. Nobody will stop you. As society progresses, however,
more and more people will laugh at you behind your back, or maybe to
your face, if you continue to make a fool of yourself by acting that
way.

<rest snipped - why bother>