Barney Frank Explains How America’s Libertarian Nature Is Helping Legalize Gay Marriage, Marijuana

Former Congressman Barney Frank sat down with the folks at the
absurdly named Big Think (these are the same folks who gave Bill
Nye a platform to assume opponents of
Common Core are creationists) about the future of marijuana
legalization. Though probably better known to the public for his
advocacy on gay rights and financial regulation, he’s been a
constant fighter to end the war on
drugs, long before the current push.

This short segment combines (marries, if you will) analysis of
how people’s attitudes are changing on marijuana legalization with
changes in opinion on recognizing marriages of gay couples. I’m
bringing up the video because he makes some interesting
libertarian-friendly statements (including actually referencing
libertarianism):

Some bullet points of interest:

• He describes the dilemma of those in favor of the bans as
  struggling to come up with reasons why it should be a legal or
  government issue. He notes that America’s “basic libertarianism”
  makes it difficult to convince people to ban something just because
  you think it’s morally wrong. They have to show it has real
  negative consequences that affect other people. Because
  prohibitions had been hammered through earlier, though, it was
  impossible to disprove claims that gay marriage and marijuana use
  caused actual harms.
• Thus, the awesomeness of federalism! He doesn’t actually use
  the word, but he talks about how a few places broke through years
  ago: Massachusetts and Vermont on marriage, and the many states
  that began legalizing marijuana for medical use. Thus we are able
  to get the evidence that gay marriage and marijuana don’t cause the
  sorts of social harms that banners insisted on: “None of the
  negative effects people predicted have occurred. Reality beat the
  prejudice.”
• Frank explains that when he first began pushing to legalize
  marijuana, he faced opposition from black political leaders who
  worried about the impact of drug use on their communities. But
  their attitudes changed when they saw the “absolutely undeniable
  discriminatory nature of the law enforcement” of drug laws against
  minorities.