Civil Disobedience and Gay Marriage

[Updates below.]

Texans seek same-sex marriages

Same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses at the Travis County clerk's office Friday knew they'd be denied but wanted to make a point.

"If we were allowed, we'd be in here today just like anybody else who is preparing to marry," said Michael McClain, 38, a U.S. Postal Service employee looking forward to a Valentine's Day commitment ceremony with his partner Brad Parks, 36, an advertising copywriter.

Margy Meacham, 44, was turned away with her partner of 16 years, Nancy Hickman, 59.

"We should be able to have the same rights as everyone else and ... express our committed relationship the way that we want," Meacham said.

It fell to Betty Anderson, as division manager of recording in the clerk's office, to tell the couples what they already knew ? that they couldn't get licenses.

When one applicant voiced the hope that some day the law will allow them to marry, Anderson responded quietly: "Someday, maybe. Today, no."

Portions © 2004 KENS 5 and the San Antonio Express-News. All rights reserved.

If a law is immoral and unjust, I support people standing up to it and engaging in that behavior anyway.

Laws prohibiting homosexual couples from legally marrying are unjust and immoral. While I think marriage should be privatized and removed entirely from the sphere of government, in the meantime, I support these people and the folks in San Francisco who want to be recognized as equal in the eyes of the law.

Perhaps a different individual liberty arguement could be made going in the other direction; namely that since I want to go further and remove the anti-single bias in the law (married couples get all sorts of incentives from the government), banning gay marriages doesn't actually marr my goals and in fact takes them further. Kind of like believing we can expand a lower tax system by just granting breaks to all sorts of companies rather than lowering them all at once. Reverse psychology from a political rights angle. But while you could do this, taking the next step and "banning" heterosexual marriage simply will not happen. It would be much easier to allow any consenting adults to marry and then revoking the government-provided privileges married couples now enjoy, returning the whole system to a more free and equal status.

I am, of course, unsettled by the need gay couples apparently feel to have their relationships vetted and recognized by the government. Sure, it's a discrimination issue and is rightly fought, but a relationship's validity rests on how the parties in it feel towards each other, not whether the states of California, Massachusetts, or Texas agree their relationship is legitimate.

Austin news link via Stanley Kurtz in The Corner, whom I obviously disagree with on this topic.

UPDATED 2/18/2007 11:10pm
Austin's Gay Marriages

Posted by Drizzten at February 17, 2004 01:43 PM