Last night a U.S. district
judge ruled that
Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage recognition was
unconstitutional and ordered the state to start handing out
licenses beginning Friday.
This ruling is right on the heels of a similar decision by a
county judge in
Arkansas last Friday. Gay couples in that state have
started getting married, though the state is looking to suspend
the order for appeal.
The most important thing to learn from Idaho’s ruling is that
the governor’s name is two pieces of gay slang, Butch Otter. I’m
pretty sure I’ve seen guys described with those exact words.
Despite the gay-friendly name, he declared he will appeal the
verdict.
Anyway, I’m making fun of Gov. Otter’s name because I am unsure
of what else I can add to the discussion of gay marriage
recognition. I’ve written something about
each of the rulings for states like Texas, Michigan, Arkansas, and
many of the other pro-recognition rulings that have come in the
wake of the Supreme Court’s United States v. Windsor
decision that struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act.
I lamented this morning that I had run out of things to say
about the issue, prompting this amusing tweet:
Well, there’s this: Every time a ruling like this happens,
there’s a dozen comments or so about getting the government out of
marriage entirely. While I think that’s a great goal for creating
an equal playing field in areas like government entitlements and
taxation, I still have deep fears our court system won’t know how
to deal with legal family conflicts.
When a federal judge in Oklahoma struck down the state’s ban on
gay marriage recognition, a conservative state legislator named
Mike Turner said he was going to craft a bill
eliminating government marriage in Oklahoma entirely. After the
quick rush of initial, extremely superficial stories, I attempted
to get in touch with him to delve deeper into the proposal to see
if he had researched or thought about all the things the state
would need to change if it were to end official marriage licensing.
Unfortunately, he declined to speak further on the matter, leaving
some coverage to characterize his actions as some sort of “cut
off his nose to spite his face” act of retribution.
Who knows—they may be right about Turner, but that doesn’t mean
other efforts to divorce marriage from the government are about
denying people the right to freely associate. From the libertarian
perspective, it’s the opposite. The government is the barrier, not
the liberator. So a thought exercise: Presume that we can’t just
eliminate marriage licenses entirely, as much as we might want to.
The good news in these gay marriage rulings is that judges are
pointing out that the state doesn’t really have an actual stake in
using marriage incentives to further breeding (and isn’t handing
marriage licenses out based on the concept anyway). What actually
can or should be done next to further reduce government involvement
in our family composition choices?
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