Tag Archives: gay marriage

In the Wake of Obergefell v. Hodges: Gay Marriage, Religious Liberty, and the Free Markets

[Photo: Church of the Pilgrims, a Presbyterian USA Church in Washington DC, via Wikimedia Commons.]

On Friday, June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court held in Obergefell v. Hodges that under the Fourteenth Amendment, states are required to license marriages between same-sex partners and to also recognize same-sex marriage licenses from other states. The topic of same-sex marriage is probably one of the most polarizing topics in modern-day America. Over the past several days I have seen dozens of people, both for and against same-sex marriage, acting hateful to one another, unfriending and/or blocking people on social media because they have different views, and just having a very nasty tone. But why? Why can’t we have a dialogue on the topic? Let’s face it. Obergefell is now the law of the land. The purpose of this post is to try to open that dialogue. So now that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, what comes next?

Gay Marriage

Contrary to what many may think, the Supreme Court did not create new law here. They did not legislate from the bench. The Supreme Court has a long history of recognizing marriage as a fundamental right and has held that the states cannot discriminate against consenting adults with regard to this fundamental right. The Supreme Court has held this time and time again. As Justice Kennedy noted in his majority opinion:

[T]he Court has long held the right to marry is protected by the Constitution.
In Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 12 (1967), which invalidated bans on interracial unions, a unanimous Court held marriage is “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” The Court reaffirmed that holding in Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U. S. 374, 384 (1978), which held the right to marry was burdened by a law prohibiting fathers who were behind on child support from marrying. The Court again applied this principle in Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78, 95 (1987), which held the right to marry was abridged by regulations limiting the privilege of prison inmates to marry. Over time and in other contexts, the Court has reiterated that the right to marry is fundamental under the Due Process Clause.

– Obergefell (slip op., at 11)

Furthermore, the right to marry is guaranteed under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Anytime that a fundamental right is restricted to a group of people, the government bears the burden of proving that the law is necessary to meet a compelling government interest, that it is narrowly tailored to meet that interest, and that the means of implementing the law is the least restrictive means available. The Court found that there is no compelling government interest in denying same-sex couples the fundamental right to marry solely because of their sexual orientation. This is not creating new law. This is the Supreme Court telling the states that any law which restricts fundamental rights between consenting adults is unconstitutional.

Another argument that I often hear is that people think that this should be left up to the individual states to decide. That would be true under the Tenth Amendment. However, the Tenth Amendment only applies to powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution. The Supreme Court has the power to interpret these laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. So the states’ rights argument doesn’t apply. Bans on same-sex marriage also violate the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This means that citizens who move to a new state are entitled to the same rights and privileges of citizens in the new state. The state cannot discriminate against them. Therefore, a marriage license that is valid in Massachusetts is also valid in Mississippi. A state cannot discriminate against people who move from other states.

This is not a legislative issue either. As Justice Kennedy stated:

The dynamic of our constitutional system is that individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right. The Nation’s courts are open to injured individuals who come to them to vindicate their own direct, personal stake in our basic charter. An individual can invoke a right to constitutional protection when he or she is harmed, even if the broader public disagrees and even if the legislature refuses to act. Obergefell (slip op., at 24)

So even though the ideal process may be to go through the democratically elected legislature, this does not preclude one from raising the issue before the Court if his or her fundamental rights are abridged.

Therefore, the Supreme Court did not create a new law. They did not legislate from the bench. This is not a case of judicial activism run amok. Even if you do not agree with gay marriage, at least understand that the government cannot deprive others of fundamental rights that are given to the rest of us.

Religious Liberties

Rest assured that just because same-sex couples can now marry in all 50 states, it does not mean that the government can discriminate against religious institutions. The government should not force any particular denomination, pastor, priest, or clergy to perform a same-sex wedding against their will. This would violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

I don’t foresee this as much of an issue. Most gay people that I know would get married outside of the church anyway. But if a same-sex couple does want to get married in a particular denomination, their right to marry is not infringed by a pastor’s denial to perform the service. The same-sex couple is still free to seek out another pastor. If a Southern Baptist church does not want to perform the ceremony, the couple can go to an Episcopalian church. If a pastor with the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) declines to perform a ceremony based on his religious conviction, the couple can seek a pastor with the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) willing to perform the ceremony.

Therefore, I don’t see this decision as an attack on our religious liberties. Every denomination should be able to exercise their faith and religion as they see fit under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. If you do agree with gay marriage, at least understand that the government cannot infringe on a clergy’s right to exercise his or her faith by declining to perform a same-sex marriage.

Free Markets

Okay. So now same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states. How does this affect the markets and what does it mean for all of the bakers, florists, photographers, et. al who decline their services to same-sex couples? As a Christian AND a libertarian, I sometimes find myself at odds with…myself. Even if I disagree with something that goes against my convictions, it doesn’t give me the right to deprive another of their rights or hate on them for their choices. So I want to view this topic in two lights. How should this be handled with regard to the free markets and the courts? And how does this appear in the eyes of God?

Over the past several years, Christian wedding service providers, such as bakers, florists, and photographers, have declined to provide their services to same sex weddings. In Colorado, Masterpiece Cakeshop was sued for failing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex reception. Despite the owner’s willingness to serve homosexuals in his establishment, he believes that making the wedding cake means that he is participating in the union and it goes against his convictions. More recently, in Oregon, an administrative judge proposed that Sweet Cakes by Melissa pay a same sex couple $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex marriage. Then of course, there was the New Mexico case where the NM State Supreme Court held that Elane Photography discriminated against a same-sex couple by refusing to record their wedding, despite their policy on welcoming gay couples for other services.

From a free market, libertarian position, I disagree with all of these decisions. In each of these cases, the business owner was willing to serve gay couples, but did not want to participate in the wedding ceremony. Businesses are rewarded or punished in the marketplace for their stances and services. If a customer doesn’t like their stance, s/he does not have to give them business. Let the markets dictate what happens to the business. I also understand the business point of view that their services are forms of expression. They should be protected from being forced to cave on their religious convictions. If they don’t want to express themselves in that manner, I don’t agree that they should be forced to. But does that mean that it’s the right decision?

As Christians, is this the way that we are to show our love to the world? In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus tells us that we are to first, love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind and second, that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we decline these services to others, are we loving our neighbors as ourselves? Are we reflecting the love of Jesus as we are called to do? I don’t think so. Jesus never really hung out with the religious folks. He was always meeting with, preaching to, and loving on the fishermen, the taxcollectors, the prostitutes, the dregs of society. Jesus said that he didn’t come for the righteous or powerful, but to save those who are lost. When we refuse services to same-sex couples, are we drawing them closer to God, or are we just pushing them further away?

I think that it’s time that we love our neighbors as ourselves.

 

Albert is a licensed attorney and holds a J.D. from Barry University School of Law as well as an MBA and BA in Political Science from The University of Central Florida. He is a conservative libertarian and his interests include judicial politics, criminal procedure, and elections. He has one son named Albert and a black lab puppy named Lincoln. In his spare time, he plays and coaches soccer.

Rand Paul Is Not a Perfect Libertarian, But He Comes Closer Than the Rest

In a post over at Reason’s Hit & Run, Jacob Sullum is asking “Can Rand Paul’s Positions on Abortion and Gay Marriage Be Defended on Libertarian Grounds?” Sullum concludes that yes, they can be, “but you have to try pretty hard.”

The correct answer as to both is no.

First, with respect to abortion, Rand Paul believes that from the point of conception, human life is entitled to state protection. Sullum concludes that this position “can be defended on libertarian grounds” once one “accept[s] the premise that a fetus is a person with a right to life.”

Rand Paul is correct (and Sullum is right to implicitly recognize) that abortion is not self-evidently beyond the purview of government. To the contrary, conflicts between rights-bearing individuals are quintessentially within that purview.

Government is the repository of collective force, the monopolistic holder of the privilege to enforce conformance to the collective will. According to most libertarians, that power is legitimately wielded to protect individual liberty, such as through the punishment and prevention of crimes like assault, battery, murder, rape, robbery, etc.

As an aside, from what I understand, even most anarchists endorse some sort of protocol for dealing with violence. One of my disagreements with anarchists is that I have never found anything semantically useful about calling those protocols anything other than “government.”

In any case, Paul and Sullum are therefore further correct that, if one accepts the unborn have rights, abortion is an issue that falls well within the purview of the state—because it involves a conflict between individual rights most of us readily acknowledge (the right to control one’s body versus the right to continue living).

As far as I know, however, nothing in libertarian doctrine answers the underlying, fundamental question of whether and when the unborn become rights-bearing. Only philosophy can tell us what attributes entitle a living entity to rights, and only medical science can tell us when the unborn develop those attributes.

I therefore disagree with Sullum in this very narrow respect: It would be better to say there is nothing inherently unlibertarian about Paul’s position on abortion than to say that libertarianism provides a basis for defending that position. Perhaps I am being pedantic. Perhaps it is an issue purely of semantics.

But it is one that matters to libertarians and non-libertarians alike.

Paul has some treacherous political terrain to navigate if he hopes to win both the GOP primary and a general election. If he wants the libertarian base to cross that terrain with him, he will probably need to articulate his positions with that level of finesse.

As a final note on the abortion issue, since non-libertarians often ask how we come down on this, I will go ahead and state my own position for the record. My own personal criteria for recognizing a living being’s entitlement to rights include some combination of the following: the ability to prefer existence over non-existence, the potential for high level sentience and the capacity to experience pain. I do not support interfering with a woman’s bodily autonomy from the moment of conception. I agree with Rand Paul, however, that fetuses become rights-bearing before the end of pregnancy and even before the end of the first trimester.

Second, on the issue of gay marriage, Sullum quotes Paul as lamenting that:

Ultimately, we could have fixed this a long time ago if we just allowed contracts between adults. We didn’t have to call it marriage, which offends myself and a lot of people…

From a libertarian perspective, there is no “we” here. There is no group properly endowed with the power to decide for everyone else what relationships get to be called “marriages.” It is for individuals to decide whether their relationship constitutes a “marriage,” and it is for other individuals to decide whether they agree with that characterization.

The issue is increasingly a litmus test precisely because it is so revealing of a candidate’s feelings about the relationship between individuals and government. It will be hard to sell a message of small government and liberty while simultaneously insisting that government should be so deeply involved in our lives as to define relationships and dictate how words are to be used.

In the past, Paul has indicated that he supports leaving it to the states to decide whether to recognize gay marriage. That position might solve Paul’s political problems as a federal candidate. But it is not inherently libertarian. Libertarians are, generally speaking, concerned with defining and limiting the exercise of force. That concern is not limited to federal government exercises of force.

Without more, Paul’s reliance on federalism requires libertarians to accept the following compromise: that while Paul believes state governments can interfere with private marriage, since he is not running for state office, we ought not worry overmuch about it. The argument is not without its merits. But it is also not libertarian.

On the other hand, Paul’s comments last year that “I don’t really think the government needs to be too involved with” marriage were decidedly libertarian in nature. Perhaps that is even his true position, and his more recent remarks have been more about rallying another wing of the GOP base. Whether he can get past the primary without clarifying remains to be seen.

As a final note, sophisticated social conservatives will argue that state maintenance of traditional marriage does not constitute an exercise of force, but merely an expression of what relationships the majority choose to recognize as “married” within the meaning of the law. The distinction is worthy of recognition and merits debate. However, states use force to collect taxpayer money to run their marriage licensing programs, and most libertarians intuitively support some version of “equal protection” doctrine.

In summary, to answer Sullum’s question, Paul’s position on when life becomes entitled to state protection is neither supported by nor contradicted by libertarian doctrine. If he thinks state legislatures can define marriage for individuals, however, Paul is far afield from basic libertarian tenets.

Does that mean I won’t vote for him?

No. I fully intend to vote for Rand Paul in the GOP primary. If he actually gets the nomination—and I hope he does—I may vote for him in the general as well. For one thing, I suspect that his true position on gay marriage is largely libertarian. Even if I am wrong about that, Rand Paul is still leagues more libertarian than any candidate the two major parties has run in my adult life.

I have never been lucky enough to be offered a candidate who both satisfies my politics and has a chance of winning. His imperfections notwithstanding, it would be nice if Rand Paul could change that.

Sarah Baker is a libertarian, attorney and writer. She lives in Montana with her daughter and a house full of pets.

Instead Of Giving Gay Marriage Opponents Special Rights, Get Rid Of All Anti-Discrimination Laws

The Alabama House passed a bill on Thursday that allows judges to refuse to perform gay marriages. It passed after a four-hour debate by a vote of 69-25. More “religious protection” bills are on the way according to groups pushing this legislation.

The bill was passed to ease fears that judges and ministers would be forced to perform gay marriages if court rulings legalizing gay marriage in Alabama were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. This bill to be blunt is a travesty, would open the door to lawlessness by Alabama’s judges, and should be vetoed.

The first problem with this bill is that it tries to link judges performing gay marriage ceremonies with other travesties on this issue, such as requiring bakers to bake cakes for gay wedding ceremonies. There is a major moral difference between a private company refusing to offer a service and government official refusing to perform their legal duty. Judges are bound by law to serve all of their constituents and perform certain duties as described, despite their own personal feelings on the matter. One of those duties is solemnizing marriages. A judge cannot refuse to perform an interracial marriage because they personally disapprove it.

On the other hand, fining or legally punishing a private individual because they refuse to perform services for a gay wedding is immoral. In this age of Yelp and social media where customers can easily leave reviews of businesses, we need to ask ourselves if anti-discrimination laws covering the private sector are obsolete. If a business is discriminating based on gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion; it’s more easy for customers to identify those offending businesses and for people to vote accordingly with their pocketbooks. There is no need for the state to get involved and punish businesses with fines and other punishments.

If a judge cannot perform a gay marriage ceremony because they disagree with it, they should not be a judge. This is like refusing to sentence someone to jail because they object to a law. Judges do not have that discretion in criminal law and should not have that kind of discretion in marriage law.

As for ministers being forced to perform gay marriages, that’s a red herring. The First Amendment already protects the rights of ministers to refuse to perform gay marriages. The decision of churches to solemnize marriages to whom ever they want, as long as they can legally consent, is a protected religious practice. This legislation to protect them is not necessary.

The best way to solve is to divorce government from the act of solemnizing marriage. Make the only legal paperwork that has to be signed off is the marriage contract itself. Whenever a county or parish official files or signs off on a contract, they’re not passing judgment on the issue. All they’re doing is just filing legal paperwork so it can be enforced in courts. We should also look into ways into getting government out of marriage for tax purposes and other services.

All of these “religious protection bills” miss the big picture. Why should private businesses have the right to discriminate against potential customers based upon their religious beliefs and not have the right to discriminate based on other factors? Here’s another way to put it, why should gay marriage opponents have special rights?

Instead of writing “religious protection bills” to protect business owners from being bankrupted and driven out of business by government agencies for deciding who they want to serve, legislatures should consider a different approach. Every legislature should pass a bill or better yet an amendment to their state’s constitution stating this:

The right of any private business to deny service for any reason, except for emergency medical services and emergency lodging in a licensed hotel, shall not be infringed by any law.

 

 

Anti-discrimination laws, in this era of social media, are relics of the past. It’s time to make these laws history and let the marketplace punish discrimination. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to trust ordinary people than the government.

 

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

Sixth Circuit Decision Upholding Gay Marriage Bans Invites Supreme Court Review

finally married 2

On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld gay marriage bans in Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky. It did so by reversing lower court rulings striking down the bans. This decision puts the Sixth Circuit out of step with the other circuit courts to address the issue thus far (the Fourth, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth). The decision is sure to be appealed, and many observers believe it will be the vehicle by which SCOTUS finally weighs in on the issue.

DeBoer v. Snyder was decided 2-1. The majority decision was authored by Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton. Sutton largely argues that the definition of marriage should not be “constitutionalized” and that change should come from the voters. He maintains that the right to marriage recognized as fundamental in prior SCOTUS cases is defined by, and presumes, a relationship between one man and one woman. He rejects sexual orientation as a suspect classification entitled to heightened scrutiny, and frets that constitutionalizing gay marriage will require recognition of plural marriages.

Having found no need to apply heightened scrutiny to the bans, Sutton finds two rational bases for denying marriage to same sex couples. The first involves channeling straight people’s sexual energies into monogamous, legally binding relationships:

One starts from the premise that governments got into the business of defining marriage, and remain in the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to regulate sex, most especially the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse. Imagine a society without marriage. It does not take long to envision problems that might result from an absence of rules about how to handle the natural effects of male-female intercourse: children. May men and women follow their procreative urges wherever they take them? Who is responsible for the children that result? How many mates may an individual have? How does one decide which set of mates is responsible for which set of children? That we rarely think about these questions nowadays shows only how far we have come and how relatively stable our society is, not that States have no explanation for creating such rules in the first place.

Once one accepts a need to establish such ground rules, and most especially a need to create stable family units for the planned and unplanned creation of children, one can well appreciate why the citizenry would think that a reasonable first concern of any society is the need to regulate male-female relationships and the unique procreative possibilities of them. One way to pursue this objective is to encourage couples to enter lasting relationships through subsidies and other benefits and to discourage them from ending such relationships through these and other means.

The dissent scores powerful points observing that heterosexuals are already free to follow their procreative urges where they will, and that the unwanted children resulting from such unions suffer when their adopted same-sex parents are precluded from marrying. In any case, Sutton’s second rationale for upholding the bans has to do with principles of federalism:

[O]ne of the key insights of federalism is that it permits laboratories of experimentation—accent on the plural—allowing one State to innovate one way, another State another, and a third State to assess the trial and error over time. …. How can we say that the voters acted irrationally for sticking with the seen benefits of thousands of years of adherence to the traditional definition of marriage in the face of one year of experience with a new definition of marriage? A State still assessing how this has worked, whether in 2004 or 2014, is not showing irrationality, just a sense of stability and an interest in seeing how the new definition has worked elsewhere. Even today, the only thing anyone knows for sure about the long-term impact of redefining marriage is that they do not know. A Burkean sense of caution does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, least of all when measured by a timeline less than a dozen years long and when assessed by a system of government designed to foster step-by-step, not sudden winner-take-all, innovations to policy problems.

Indeed, this decision creates a conflict among the circuit courts that did not exist (or at least not clearly) back in October, when SCOTUS declined to hear appeals from decisions in the Fourth, Seventh and Tenth circuits striking down similar bans.

Shortly after SCOTUS declined those appeals, the Ninth Circuit also struck down bans.

Collectively, those decisions were reached in a variety of ways: finding that the bans failed under rational basis review; applying heightened scrutiny to restriction of a fundamental right under a due process analysis; or applying heightened scrutiny under an equal protection analysis based on suspect classification or history of animus. However reached, they had the result of making gay marriage legal in 32 states (with three additional states with bans still technically in effect, which will inevitably be struck down).

That left litigation percolating in the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Eleventh circuits. The decision Thursday by the Sixth was the first to break the prior pattern. Most commentators believe SCOTUS will now accept review to resolve the conflict. As Doug Mataconis, writing for Outside the Beltway, explained:

[T]he most important thing about the decisions in these cases is the fact that it creates the split among the Circuit Courts of Appeals that the Justices apparently felt was lacking when they considered the appeals it acted on in early October. … With this decision, though it can no longer be said that there is not a Circuit split since the differences between Judge Sutton’s opinion and those from the other four Circuits could not be more apparent. Thus, the one thing that didn’t exist on this issue in early October regarding this issue can now be said to clearly exist, and the likelihood that the Supreme Court will accept an appeal to this decision would seem to be quite high.

Only four justices need to agree for SCOTUS to accept an appeal. Assuming one is accepted, Mataconis and others predict SCOTUS will rule that the states cannot regulate gay marriage, by a majority consisting of at least Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, plus Kennedy.[1]

From my own perspective, I do not see how we avoid the leviathan of government once we accept its tentacles are properly applied to the regulation of personal relationships. Even if the collective will was acceptably used to such ends, I have not come across convincing reasons for denying same sex couples access to the same bag of government goodies, incentives and subsidies enjoyed by opposite sex couples. The various theories propounded by opponents of gay marriage are belied by the sound sociological research to the contrary. Plural marriage does not frighten me, both because it does not rise to the same level of constitutional scrutiny as gay marriage—and because it is inherently non-frightening. Finally, I have and will continue to oppose all efforts to force private people, churches or businesses to associate with gay marriages against their will. The same principles that underpin the right to choose a spouse also underpin the right to choose with whom to do business.

I will close with Justice Sutton’s own observation that:

Over time, marriage has come to serve another value—to solemnize relationships characterized by love, affection, and commitment. Gay couples, no less than straight couples, are capable of sharing such relationships. And gay couples, no less than straight couples, are capable of raising children and providing stable families for them. The quality of such relationships, and the capacity to raise children within them, turns not on sexual orientation but on individual choices and individual commitment. All of this supports the policy argument made by many that marriage laws should be extended to gay couples, just as nineteen States have done through their own sovereign powers.

_____________________________________

[1] Kennedy wrote the majority decisions in Romer v. Evans (overturning a Colorado law preventing local governments from enacting anti-discrimination regulations to protect homosexuals), Lawrence v. Texas (overruling sodomy laws), and U.S. v. Windsor (overturning provisions of DOMA allowing the federal government to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages performed by states).

Sarah Baker is a libertarian, attorney and writer. She lives in Montana with her daughter and a house full of pets.

What the GOP shouldn’t take Tuesday’s results to mean

Tuesday night was a special night for Republicans throughout the nation. Big wins in key races handed the GOP control of the Senate to go along with their control of the House, to say nothing of big wins putting more governor mansions in the red. Needless to say, life on the right is good right now.

However, it’s important to understand what those results don’t mean. » Read more

First, I’d like to take a moment to mention how great it is to be posting something to The Liberty Papers. In 2009, I joined with a friend in a project he had started where we blogged about area politics. I’d blogged a little bit here and there before about whatever random things, but my libertarian streak had never really gotten a chance to fly.

Suddenly, I had a platform. To say it changed my life was…well, a significant understatement. It lead to me getting to know some pretty cool people, many of whom are here at The Liberty Papers. It gave me the opportunity to first write for a local newspaper, and then eventually buy it. While that didn’t necessarily work out, it was yet another example of me being able to write a lot of words in a fairly short amount of time. So, I did like a lot of people and decided to write a book. Bloody Eden came out in August and is available at Amazon (or your favorite book website for that matter).

Now that we’ve gotten the history out of the way, a bit about the politics. First, I’m probably best described as a classical liberal. At least, that’s what every “What kind of libertarian are you?” quiz has told me, and they’re probably right. I’m a constitutional libertarian, for the most part. If the Constitution says they can do it, it doesn’t mean they should, but if the Constitution says they can’t, then they can’t. It just doesn’t get any simpler than that.

I look forward to contributing here at The Liberty Papers.

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