On the \u201cLibertarian Case\u201d Against Gay Marriage<\/b><\/p>\n
Political theory is not my field, but I have a rudimentary understanding of the major works that I developed when I was assigned as a teaching assistant in a freshman political science class on the subject.\u00a0Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say something about\u00a0this little piece of writing<\/a>\u2014\u201cMarriage and the Limits of Contract\u201d\u2014by\u00a0Jennifer Roback Morse<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Hoover Institution<\/a>. [EDIT: Now with the Ruth Institute<\/a>].<\/p>\n This is a self-described \u201cLibertarian\u201d making the \u201cLibertarian\u201d case for state management of reproduction and sexual activity.\u00a0To get there she defines marriage as \u201ca society\u2019s normative institution for both sexual activity and the rearing of children,\u201d and then argues that \u201csociety can and must discriminate among various arrangements for childbearing and sexual activity,\u201d because \u201csociety, especially a free society, needs the institution of marriage\u2026\u201d\u00a0Morse thinks the state should regulate private sexual activity and manage family relationships to preserve a\u00a0norm<\/i>\u00a0about the way human beings should run their lives, even as she defines \u201clibertarian freedom\u201d as the \u201cmodest demand to be left alone by the coercive apparatus of the government.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite this definition, such regulation is Libertarian, she says, because \u201cdissolution of marriage breaks the family into successively smaller units that are less able to sustain themselves without state assistance.\u201d\u00a0When this happens, the state must step in to provide assistance for those whose families do not, and this requires more government.\u00a0She is saying that the state must manage sexual activity, childbearing, and family relationships so that it will not have to support those left without family support.\u00a0By \u201cleft alone\u201d she means \u201cforced to have and support a family so the government won\u2019t have to redistribute wealth.\u201d\u00a0In this version of libertarianism the point is not to limit the coercive power of government but to focus government coercion on specific areas of human activity in support of specific social norms that a particular segment of the population thinks best.<\/p>\n It is difficult to decide where to start with this.\u00a0Reluctant as I am to criticize a fellow academic so bluntly, I have to say that if one of my undergraduate students handed this in as an essay making a libertarian case for state management of childbearing and sexual activity I would give it about a \u201cC,\u201d for several reasons.\u00a0Since I do not have hours to spend deconstructing this, I will focus here on ontology and argue that she gets the \u201cstate of nature\u201d wrong\u2014it does not include social norms.<\/p>\n One reason why Morse seems to think that it does is that she thinks Rousseau defines \u201cnatural\u201d as \u201cacting on impulse\u201d and \u201cfreedom\u201d as \u201cunencumbered by law.\u201d\u00a0(It is not clear how \u201cunencumbered by law\u201d differs from \u201cleft alone by the coercive apparatus of government.\u201d) \u00a0Morse never defines \u201cstate of nature\u201d beyond suggesting that Rousseau\u2019s is \u201cunnatural\u201d because \u201ca widespread nonsystem of impersonal sexual couplings has never occurred in any known society,\u201d and no belief system has \u201cever claimed that sexual activity is meaningless, having only the meaning individuals privately assigned to it.\u201d\u00a0For Morse, the state of nature is constricted by social norms, at least in the sexual arena.<\/p>\n