Conservatives Are Right On Gay Marriage

Ted Olson, the lead lawyer for President Bush during the 2000 election, has teamed up with his then-Gore counterpart David Boies to overturn California’s Proposition 8. According to a New York Times profile on August 19, Olson believes gay rights are a major civil rights issue, and that it is not the government’s place to tell people what they can and cannot do regarding their own private relationships, even in marriage.

I believe Olson is to be commended for his efforts- his history shows a man who truly believes this case “could be the most important case of his career,” as stated in the NYT piece. Furthermore, it is made very clear that Olson is a?libertarian at heart, opposing affirmative action programs, race-based busing and ending termination on the basis of sexual orientation among other noteworthy efforts. From that libertarian background, overturning Proposition 8 makes perfect sense. I disagree with his position on gay marriage, but his logic tracks clean from his personal moral, ethical and political stances in the past.

The issue I have with Olson is his description of the argument against gay marriage. According to the Times, “He dismisses Mr. Cooper?s contention that the California ban is justified by that state?s interest in encouraging relationships that promote procreation and the raising of children by biological parents. If sexual orientation is not a choice ? and Mr. Olson argues that it is not ? then the ban is not going to encourage his clients to enter into heterosexual, child-producing marriages, he insists.”

The point of Proposition 8 was not to encourage gay men and women to turn into heterosexual people: the point was to prevent the legalization of gay marriage in California. The question itself was: “Shall the California Constitution be changed to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry providing that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California?” Nowhere is there an attempt, in this language, to “turn” someone heterosexual.

This is, I think, emblematic of the key differences between conservatives, libertarians and liberals. Liberals want (mostly well-intentioned) laws and policies for small portions of society: gay people, black people, women, handicapped people, etc. However, there are often unintended consequences that affect a larger number of people. For example, abortion is supposed to provide a privacy stipulation for women, but it has instead contributed to the deaths of 1.3 million children per year, on average, since 1973, according to the National Right To Life Committee. Progressive taxation was supposed to protect the poor- yet another minority group liberals target- yet often?HURT the poor and middle-class as well, according to The FairTax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS. A third example of well-intentioned (but mistaken) efforts meant to benefit the few is Title IX, which has discriminated towards men’s sports.

Libertarians, on the other hand (again, with mostly good intentions), believe what human beings want to do should be up to them. Many support gay marriage for equality of choice purposes, and many others believe marriage should be left in a church with not a peep by the government. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), the former Libertarian Party presidential candidate, was against abortion but felt legislation on the matter should be left to individual states on a matter of political principle. The negative to this view, of course, is that human beings DON’T always do what is best, which is why an effective government kept within its proper sphere is necessary (consider speed limits, for example).

Conservatives have the best of both the liberal and libertarian worlds. We believe in the proper scope and involvement of government, but we also believe in largely letting people- and a people/consumer-driven market- decide where to let the pieces fall. Essentially, we believe in looking at the cost-benefit analysis of a situation and responding appropriately. For example, the Food and Drug Administration prohibits gay people from donating blood. This is NOT because they wish to discriminate against this particular group of citizens, but because of the high number of new AIDS cases found in the gay community each year. According to a Red Cross doctor who visited my campus in 2005, the FDA and Red Cross are not concerned with about offending givers but are seriously concerned with providing bad blood. He explained this was why other groups (certain foreigners, tourists to certain countries, inner-city black men and women, etc.) are also discriminated against. I followed the evidence I saw at the time, which showed that the FDA policy was more correct than not. I felt very comfortable defending this policy to the numerous homosexuals on my campus who felt differently. However, the Red Cross now has better testing, and the gay community’s awareness and activism have been great on the AIDS front. Most importantly, however, the three major blood donation groups in America support lifting the ban, so my opinion is swiftly heading away from my previous opinion. The evidence supports lifting the ban, so I do as well.

Again, we conservatives believe that government should be left within its proper sphere, as some human desires do require curtailing- but never should the government get so involved it interferes with the pursuit of happiness and the ability to succeed (or fail). When it comes down to it, I believe conservatives have thought the issue of gay marriage through to its logical conclusion; that, should it be allowed on a national legislative or judicial level, traditional marriage will be underserved by a society that has no problem with shrugging its benefits off as inconsequential. Furthermore, religious freedoms and freedom of speech will be curtailed by gay activists and the courts (several years ago, for example, government regulations on gay adoptions in Massachusetts forced Catholic Charities to close its adoption centers in the state, and the Perez Hilton debacle is not too far past).

Liberals want to assist the gay community, and libertarians just want the government gone, and these are both respectable and honorable positions. However, neither of these ideological viewpoints holds water given the weaknesses of humans and the propensity of modern Americans to ignore well-founded traditions, especially given the harm to society that would inevitably manifest should the institution of marriage be redefined. Churches and freedom of speech would be first and hardest hit, of course- and while I do not believe gay marriage will cause harm to heterosexual marriages already in existence, or cause the downfall of American society (the issue is way back behind our national debt, our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, abortion laws and heterosexual divorce rates, to name but a few), freedom of religion and freedom of speech ARE First Amendment guarantees I hold onto very seriously.