Deroy Murdock sent me another of his articles urging the privatization of marriage as the solution to the homosexual marriage issue. Here are some excerpts from it:

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GAY MARRIAGE DOES NOT THREATEN STRAIGHT MATRIMONY
by Deroy Murdock

… Jack and Jill’s marriage would not be diluted by letting Bill and Ted wed. There is no reason why Jack and Jill should love each other any less, ‘til death do them part, just because Bill and Ted want the same level of commitment for themselves.

If marriage were a zero-sum game in which every gay wedding yielded a straight divorce, the opponents of gay nuptials would wield a mighty powerful argument. However, this worry has all the weight of a handful of airborne rice.

Indeed, the arguments of gay-marriage critics increasingly oscillate between the overblown and the hysterical.

Conservative commentator Steve Sailer contends that gay weddings will cause straight grooms—- already spooked by seating charts and floral arrangements—- to throw up their arms and head for the hills.

“It wouldn’t take much to get the average young man to turn even more against participating in an arduous process that seems alien and hostile to him already,” Sailer recently wrote. “If some of the most enthusiastic participants [in weddings] become gays, then his aversion will grow even more.”

What, then? Will young men stop getting on bended knees to ask their sweethearts for their hands in matrimony?

… Libertarian author David Boaz points to the exit from this growing mess.

He wonders: Why do either Jack or Jill or Bill and Ted need government’s permission to marry or its blessing once they have done so? The state should extract itself from the marriage-license business. Two people who wish to marry should find a minister, rabbi or, say, a Rotary Club president to grace their union. Americans then can withdraw this debate from Washington, D.C. and their state capitols and instead decide in their own churches, synagogues and civic associations which couples do and do not deserve their approval.

[end of excerpt]
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Leaving aside the appalling superficiality of Murdock’s understanding of marriage, the fact is that his proposal means destroying it as an institution. If marriage is what any local church or “civic association” decides what it is, then there is no such thing as marriage, period. Murdock, a libertarian, seems to regard his idea as a “moderate” way out of the conflict. But does he really believe that the people who are worried about the current threats to marriage are going to regard his proposal to _destroy_ marriage as the solution to their concerns? How deluded can someone be?

I sent Murdock a copy of my above article, with this note:

Your “Stephen Douglas,” libertarian approach to homosexual marriage ain’t gonna work, Deroy, any more than Douglas’s scheme of popular sovereignty—leaving the issue of slavery up to the people of each territory—worked in the 1850s. In fact, it was popular sovereignty, by opening the door to the expansion of slavery into the territories, that led directly to the Civil War. Marriage is not just a matter of people’s private choices; it is the basic institution of society; it constitutes society itself. People who seek to deconstruct marriage as a public institution, in order to make way for homosexual marriage, are doing something utterly destructive of the social order.

Mr. Auster said, “the prospect we are facing is that of a moral and political war, not a literal one.”

Which makes this an even bigger mess. In a literal war you have one side vs. another, with perhaps other parties remaining ‘neutral.’ There is also, usually, a clear sense of what is meant by ‘victory.’

In this war, one can’t be neutral. Neutrality is de facto surrender to the homosexual agenda. And while the homosexual activists have a clear vision of where they want to take things, conservatives are all over the board on how to counter this — assuming they do at all.

And then what exactly would constitute victory for one side or the other? From the homosexual side, that’s frighteningly obvious. But the other side seems to have no clue what form victory would take. There’s this tactic or that, with no sense of coherency in any strategic sense.

Put simply, we have to consider the possibility that as long as this is truly just a ‘moral and political war,’ then it may well be a war WE CANNOT WIN. I am not saying we should surrender — Never surrender!, even if we are on the losing side so long as it’s the side of right.

But I would point out that the controversy over slavery was for years itself a ‘moral and political war’ which inevitably became a ‘literal’ one. (In that case, there were at least clearly defined geographic parameter; this conflict exists within the entirety of our land.)

At some time we have to ask ourselves at what point the line has crossed where we simply cannot accept any further advance of the homosexual agenda — and ask what our response must be? Do we look to the example of King Asa for advisement?

If this sounds alarmist, then we should look at Canada or much of Europe and ask ourselves another question? If the homosexual agenda obtains dominance in our society and legal system, what do we expect those people will do to us?

The e-mail in which Deroy Murdock sent out his article on homosexual marriage has an introductory note which reads in part:

“I also am sending you a piece that explains that gay marriage does not threaten straight marriage.”

_Of course_ Murdock doesn’t think that gay marriage threatens straight marriage. How could he? For him, marriage is simply a private relationship between two people, period. So, if A and B have a relationship, what possible effect could the relationships of OTHER people have on A and B’s relationship?

Further, in order to concretize this utterly personalist understanding of marriage, Deroy proposes to end marriage as a public institution. In other words, after calmly assuring his conservative readers that marriage is not threatened at all, he proposes the official destruction of the institution of marriage as it has existed for thousands of years.

Liberals always innocently deny the destructive effect of their liberalism on society’s institutions, because they themselves are blind to the value of the institutions they seek to destroy.

Joel’s points are right-on. I added that qualification because I didn’t want to seem to be making a literal comparison between the Civil War and the controversy over homosexual marriage. But where the issue is going to end up, no one can know.

Joel is especially correct in saying that there is not yet really a war here, because only one side knows what it wants, while the other side is divided and ambivalent. For the same reason, the phrase “culture war” has always been inaccurate. The left is waging war, and the rest of us are reacting or not reacting in a variety of ways, even as the left keeps moving relentlessly forward. It’s not so much a war as a conquest.

LA wrote: “In fact, it was popular sovereignty, by opening the door to the expansion of slavery into the territories, that led directly to the Civil War.”

Sorry. Can’t let this pass unremarked. While it might be argued that the popular sovereignty position did, historically, lead to the Civil War, it nevertheless only did so by way of the prior act of secession on the part of the Southern states. If those Southern states had been allowed to secede peacefully as was their right, there would have been no war. Consequently, the suggestion implicit in your remark—that popular sovereignty causes war—is a bit disengenuous. What it may lead to is secession, but that is a different thing.

Anyway, the point I really wanted to make concerns the genius Deroy Murdock. Perhaps Mr. Murdock doesn’t realize that if we were to apply his principles to a case nearer and dearer to his own heart, we might end up saying this: that a decision to consider black men to be less than human would have no effect on white men’s status under the law. Therefore, we should let it be done.

For my part, I will let Bubba’s quibble pass.

Despite the quibble Bubba still seems to acknowledge that there is something to my analogy between Murdock’s and Douglas’s position. Douglas foolishly thought he could quiet the slavery issue by localizing it, with each territory having its own election on whether it wanted to admit slavery. That way the nation as a whole wouldn’t have to take any position on the morality of slavery and on the desirability of letting it expand beyond where it already existed in the South. Lincoln argued that slavery was a fundamental wrong and should not be proceduralized and localized as Douglas wanted. Of course, Douglas’s popular sovereignty didn’t ease the slavery controversy at all, but greatly intensified it.

Deroy Murdock, following in Douglas’s libertarian/relativist footsteps, wants to remove marriage as a public, national, moral controversy by eliminating all state marriage laws and making every local civic association or church the definer of marriage as it wants. He wants to treat the most fundamental human institution as though it were a matter of complete indifference to society as a whole, just as Douglas wanted to treat the expansion of slavery into the Western territories as though it were a matter of complete indifference to society as a whole.

And Bubba is right about the irony of a black man adopting the Stephen Douglas position.

Here is an article from 1997 by David Boaz of the Cato Institute advocating his idea of privatizing marriage. That Boaz could call marriage an “important institution,” while urging that it be stripped of any common social meaning, would tell us everything we need to know about Boaz’s intellectual probity. At this moment I have C-SPAN on with Boaz giving a very intelligent presentation about liberty to a group of young people in Washington D.C. Does anyone in this audience realize that part of the “tradition of liberty” that Boaz is so eloquently describing involves the destruction of the public institution of marriage, in order to make homosexual marriages equal with traditional marriages?

http://slate.msn.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2440

Here is an e-mail I sent to Pat Buchanan at the American Conservative.

Dear Pat:

Please consider visiting the following Website: http://www.counterrevolution.net/. I met you at one of your fund-raisers in the 2000 election, contributed money and leg work, and voted for you. (It is not noticed enough how neatly your 500,000 votes was just the number that denied Mr. Bush the popular vote, not that all those votes would have gone to W.)

You will find solid intellectual support for some of your positions such as immigration reform and protection of European America. But instead of having to sift gallons of essays to find nuggets of support, you can merely stroll along without stooping and spot hefty pieces of gold. But let me delay you no more and get down to cases.

Here is a link to merely one of the essays, which is entitled, “The Ideology of Inclusiveness”: http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/inclus.php#2. This question-and-answer essay shows that a call for nondiscrimination means we cannot prefer our mothers and fathers to others. Should you deem this observation philosophically valid and important, you could use it to pound away in discussions. Recall the successful game plan of the Clintons to construct and to repeat an idea endlessly (the difference being that Mr. Jim Kalb’s idea is true). This and the other essays provide more than enough nuance for gifted communicators to use with fellow intellectuals and common folk such as myself. Another case is: “Anti-Inclusiveness Faq” http://jkalb.freeshell.org/web/inclus.php#2.

Concerning immigration is Mr. Lawrence Auster’s essay, in which he asks why are conservatives silent about the immigrant invasion:

“What is that belief system? At its core, it is the quintessentially American notion that everyone is the same under the skin—that people should only be seen as individuals, with no reference to their historic culture, their ethnicity, their religion, their race. Now there is a great truth in the idea of a common human essence transcending our material differences. But if it is taken to be literally true in all circumstances and turned into an ideological dogma, it leads to the expectation that all people from every background and in whatever numbers can assimilate equally well into America.”

See http://www.counterrevolution.net/cgi-bin/mt/fs/fcp.pl?words=IMMIGRATION+AND+MULTICULTURALISM%3A+WHY+ARE+THE+CONSERVATIVES+SILENT%3F+&wt=ew&bl=or&d=/000637.html.

Consider suggesting to Mr. McLaughlin that he invite Mr. Kalb or Mr. Auster to be a guest in your absence or in another’s absence. The Website’s name is “On to Restoration” and has the fearless web address: http://www.counterrevolution.net/. These are significant words to fearless individuals as steeped in American history as you.

Like you, the sponsors are learned men that have read widely, to say the least. For example, see the introductory page linked in the paragraph above and the bibliography, which is at http://www.counterrevolution.net/resources/arc_resources.html, a formidable list indeed.

The sponsors ensure decency and respectful exchanges: quite an accomplishment considering our decadent society.

Not only are there a few of God’s chosen people that contribute as always, but there are also numerous Christian traditionalists to entice you. One of the co-sponsors is a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, and the other co-sponsor is a member of an Anglo-Catholic Church. Christianity is their anchor and the anchor of most of the commentators, so you will have another reason to feel at home.

The discussion part or the blog-spot is found at “View from the Right” http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/. Tune in at no risk. Have your provider devise a pseudonym as most of us do, including other FAMOUS people.

You have gifts and notoriety that are invaluable.

Sincerely,

Paul

Here’s an interesting take on marriage in Middle-Ages Catholicism quoted today in the Washington Times:

“From the late Middle Ages until the 16th century, it was much easier to get married than it is today. You did not need your parents’ approval, or the blessing of church or state, or even witnesses. If you were of age — 14 for boys, 12 for girls — and if you either exchanged words of mutual consent in the present tense (‘I take thee as my husband,’ ‘I take thee as my wife’) or exchanged promises of future consent (‘I will take thee,’ etc.) and then had sexual intercourse, you were married, until death, in the eyes of Catholic Europe. Once the Protestants took over in the northern countries, they required parental permission — Rome, too, tightened its rules — but well after the Reformation children were challenging their parents’ wishes. …The poorer you were, the more choice you had in picking a mate. It was the daughters of the nobility who tended to find themselves married in their teens to some rich fellow of their parents’ choosing. …”
— Joan Acocella, writing in “Little People,” in the Aug. 18-25 issue of the New Yorker magazine

Anyway, there’s nothing surprising about people trying to accomodate the homosexual agenda simply pulling down the transcendental God-ordained institution, thereby making some other arrangement to be on ‘equal’ terms. As long as true marriage retains its exalted status, the homosexuals will demand that their own perversion be lifted up, in the eyes of society, to that same level. But I’m sure they would prefer the former, as they would then have accomplished double damage.

Similar to how many saw their inclusion into the military as more than just ‘equality,’ but as a way to render that institution effete.

Joel makes good points, but I would offer one - slightly off-point - aside. The issue of homosexuals serving openly in the armed forces was always a mere aside. He is right that the military-hating left has always wanted to neuter the armed forces. They have done so, through the introduction of women in large numbers. The signal that this was probably inevitable came when women were permitted to enroll in the service academies (1976). The game was up when combat billets were opened to them (1994). The invented heroism of Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s imaginary resistance to capture and her probably unopposed rescue is propaganda to suppress unwelcome questions about why a young woman needed to be in that situation at all. The feminizing of the armed forces has never encountered material Republican opposition.

A country that expects its women to fight its wars is one with a shortage of real men, and one in a state of deep decline. Should we have to fight a powerful adversary that actually threatens the United States, one not hobbled by politically correct stupidity, we have reason to fear. America’s growing homosexualism is, of course, another symptom of the same disease. HRS

Mr. Sutherland is quite correct. And this has been imposed, through obvious self-deception and wishful thinking — such as in the 1996 VMI case with Justice Ginsburg’s confident assurances that the inclusion of women would not result in lowering of physical standards, (as befitting soldiers.)

Next step could be seen coming for miles: feminist groups complaining that holding women to the same physical standards was ‘discrimatory.’

It takes a lot of authoritative discrimination to stamp out authoritative discrimination.