This referring to my ad hoc, summary statement “‘Better’ means offering more flexibility.” In any case, yes, please do come back to others. I think I understand your concerns.
I’m quoting you out of order here to address salient points.
I understand this completely. To use a facile example, today, you can’t agree to contract stipulations that are illegal. To be more specific, in the Libertarian view, the role of government isn’t to regulate contracts, or indeed, regulate much of anything (enforcement, though, is a given). This is the point of mutual, consensual contracts. However you’re taking the statist view that the government must interfere, and so your and my positions aren’t unmatched due to intellectual concerns but rather philosophical concerns which is a large gap to bridge. No wonder you ignore the concessions I requested upthread!
True, in a statist society.
If you take every instance of “regulate” and substitute “interfere in” I think you will see the disconnect. You obviously think that I’m proposing that we legislate marriage away tomorrow without some other, greater change. If you have perceived of my position based on only the limited statements I’ve made rather than the broader picture, than I apologize. But all change requires other change. I think it should be fairly obvious – given the compelling societal interests – that I’ve only painted an incomplete picture.
In any case, we’re abusing this thread. I think I’ve sufficiently demonstrated that “get government out of marriage” isn’t a prima facie homophobic reaction. I’m pretty sure I said upthread that given our current laws, we should simply allow gay marriage. I’d suggest we start a new thread because this is kind of fun and bigger picture is much more interesting.
Well, to the extent someone is willing to enforce it. It’s just that once parties give the enforcement to someone else, “flexibility” goes out the window. If you gave it to a corporation that enforces contracts, they’d still have rules for what they would and would not enforce, and what certain terms mean, etc. They can’t not have that.
A contract is an agreement between parties. When the parties agree that they are going to do X and Y, everything is fine and no third party is necessary. Enforcement become necessary when party A says they agreed to X and Y and party B says no, it’s Y and Z. You can’t just say that the parties will enforce their own contracts, because the parties disagree. You can’t just let the bigger one win or you don’t actually have a contract. You can’t pick some random dude to interpret it or do Ro-Sham-Bo because, again, if the contract does not mean what it purports to mean, what good is a contract? “This contract means something until we disagree about what it means at which point it becomes random” means that any time someone wanted out of a contract, they’d just say, “I totally disagree about what this says. 1-2-3… Scissors!”
Ok, I think it’s clearer to me where you are coming from. You want a complete overhaul of the legal system from a libertarian standpoint. You think the government should be out of pretty much everything, not just marriage. I don’t agree and a lot of people in the US don’t agree.
But, I’ll re-examine your posts in that light, and reframe my arguments.
Sorry for the triple posting. Balthisar, let’s back up and talk up medical power-of-attorney. Let’s take the issue of how medical decisions are made for me if I’m unable to make them. Currently, this is the way CA works. If I’m single, then there’s a default set of regulations about who gets to make those decisions. If I’m married, there’s a slightly different default set of regulations. I can override those default regulations by drafting a medical power-of-attorney. There are regulations as to how I have to draft, and if I mess up, there are regulations as to how to resolve the mistake. Then there are regulations as to how third parties (like hospitals) and the government have to interact with my medical power-of-attorney. So, there’s a whole set of regulations that ultimately tell the hospital how to deal with me if I’m incapacitated.
How does this work in Libertopia? If I haven’t drafted anything, who makes my medical decisions? Are there regulations for that sort of thing? If I have drafted a medical power-of-attorney, does a hospital have to recognize it in Libertopia? In the absence of regulations, what compels them to recognize my medical power-of-attorney? If they decide they don’t want to recognize it, then who makes my medical decisions? Walk me through it. In Libertopia, if I am incapacitated, how do my medical decisions get made? And how does Libertopia deal with me if I never drafted anything?
You hear it when talking about marriage. I’ve got to kind of wonder, do you spend any time talking or reading about marriage, other than gay marriage? Not that there is anything wrong with that… gay marriage is kinda of a common question for debate at present.
The other half of the question is, should the church be involved in marriage at all? There are certainly branches of the Christian Church that think that the Church has no business in the marriage area, which is a government concern.
Which is connected to the question of the church in society, which is connected to the question of government in society, which is connected to the question of the individual in society — all of which are pretty common areas for thought and discussion, and most of the thought and discussion hasn’t touched on sexuality at all.