God, guns, and gays

I’ve written many times before on the question of gun rights and gay rights. Sometimes, I’ve even put the two together. Today, since both subjects are drawing the attention of America, I’m joining them to show the common thread.

As I’ve said many times, if you’re not hurting me (or an innocent person), do as you will. The Wiccans use that saying as the basis of their ethics, and it’s a good summary of the libertarian philosophy. It is also at the heart of the American way of doing things.

At the same time, Americans have a Puritan strain running through our collective consciousness. Recall H. L. Mencken’s line about Puritanism–the haunting belief that somewhere, someone is having a good time. It’s the reason that our missionaries wandered the globe making women wear woolen dresses in the tropics. It’s the reason that we forced a change of governments in Iran in 1953 and in Chile twenty years later. It’s tied up in the reason that we removed Saddam Hussein from power. In all of those, we had the belief that people were doing things in a way that we didn’t approve.

In our nation and in any society, there will always be a tension between the individual and the group. It’s been my observation, both as a student of history and by keeping my eyes open, that while individuals screw up from time to time, to make a royal mess of things requires the idiocy of crowds. That being said, I generally favor regulation to increase in direct proportion with size. Individuals deserve wide liberties, while groups often need to be restrained.

At the same time, I recognize that actions do have consequences and those consequences at times demand a response from the rest of us. When that’s the case, we have to balance the harm that could be done against the rights that we all should value.

Consider, then, the two issues that I named above. Take gay marriage first. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal considers the evidence of harms and benefits. The conclusion given, based on a review of the literature, is that there is evidence toward looser unions when same-sex couples are allowed to marry, and those same-sex couples have a lower concern about monogamy. That being said, children raised in same-sex couple households do as well as children in other relationships, and the time a relationship lasts and the number of partners tolerated in a relationship reflects overall changes in society in general.

What about guns? About 30,000 persons die in a given year from gun fire, and a couple hundred thousand are injured. The majority of deaths are suicides. Accidental deaths come in around 600. Contrast that with the number of defensive gun uses in the same period–in other words, cases in which someone uses a firearm to defend against a lethal threat–run anywhere between 108,000 and 2.5 million, depending on which study you accept. We also see that over the course of the last two decades, as gun laws have loosened and more states have allowed citizens to carry guns, the rate of violent crime has dropped. While cause and effect are hard to link, the evidence does show that more guns in more hands doesn’t result in more violence.

In other words, both gay marriage and gun ownership and carry have a mixed bag of results for society. This is where I have to fight against that Puritan yearning that so pervades American thinking. It is not the job of society to sweep in and right every wrong. A world in which no wrongs can occur is a soulless existence. Human beings are born with the power to choose, and that includes choosing right or wrong. It also includes a vast territory of grey, even presuming that our understanding of the two opposites is as good as we wish to believe.

I come back to my original idea. The fundamental principle of a society must be that each member is entitled to as much liberty as can be. The limits of liberty are defined by what would destroy the society or harm its members unduly. I realize that these terms are vague. To introduce clarity, look at the data that I cited above. Despite the mixed results, we see no evidence that either freedom will destroy us all. In fact, on balance, both freedoms create more good than harm. That being the case, I ask here a question that I often raise when the subject of control vs. freedom comes up:

Give me a reason to support control that does not depend on the theology regarding your favorite deity.

That means, obviously, the Christian God, but it just as well applies to pronouncements from social theorists in the absence of proof. Yes, the Bible in a literal reading is against homosexuality. Yes, a number of political philosophies are against private citizens having firearms. But America, a Constitutionally defined secular and agnostic nation, cannot base its laws on theology. Understand that by secular, I mean the law must be independent of any reference to an outside power, and by agnostic, I mean that without evidence and in the presence of speculation, the law must admit to not knowing.

We in this country have made the extraordinary choice to build our law on that principle. It was a good choice, both in terms of utility for the individual and the society as a whole. It was the correct choice if we believe that we all are born with rights. It is a choice that each generation has to make again and defend again.

A Marriage Proposal

I have been following with amusement and dismay the debate over the definition of marriage that has been going on for these several years.   I have had many gay and lesbian friends who could benefit from the legal status of marriage, and while recognizing the societal advantage in having stable families, I worry about allowing one religion or sect within that religion to define things for all of us.

Those who oppose gay marriage claim that changing the law would destroy the institution of marriage.  I have never seen an explanation as to how this would happen.  Would allowing gay marriage cause straight people to convert?

I recall a discussion about Muslim marriage laws that happens in the Humphrey Bogart film, Sahara.  An American soldier who is digging a well with a North African comrade asks about the nature of a marriage in which one man can have up to four wives.  The African explains the rules, but then asks the American whether he would have four wives if he were allowed to do so.   The American replies that he would not.  In that vein of thought, I ask whether a straight person would choose to marry someone of the same sex simply if it were allowed.  (I am not considering the question of how one identifies one’s orientation in this.  Lay that aside.)  What if the slippery-slope fallacy comes true and we are allowed to marry groups or a goat?   Would you do this?

Now let us consider the social benefit of families.  Without delving into the sociological literature, I am going to take as given that there is an advantage in having stable households.  During my various periods as a single man, I have noted the inconveniences and difficulties in being alone.   Simple matters such as getting an oil change or moving furniture take more time and effort without the cooperation of another.  I have never been a single parent, but I can see how that multiplies the work.

But various religious groups argue that allowing same-sex marriages would harm their ability to define sacred unions.  The confusion here is the false belief that America is a Christian nation.  Look at the text of the Constitution.  We are secular by definition.  Our founders knew the danger of mingling church and state.  The Thirty Years War and the English Civil War had happened only about a hundred years before, and the Inquisition was not so old a memory.   It has been argued that America is uniquely religious and free precisely because we have no official religion.

All of that having been said, here is my proposal:  separate marriage and government.  Allow each religion, denomination within religion, club, Internet society, and any other social organization to define what marriage means for its membership.   If one group calls marriage the union of three men and a dog, no other group is obliged to accept that.   If the Wiccans or the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints hold plural marriage as permissible or required, so be it.  I am neither one of those, and so I would not have to acknowledge those marriages if I do not want to do so, beyond the bounds of civility.   No member of the clergy of any religion would be required to perform a marriage that is not accepted within that religion’s doctrines.

At this point, please allow me to dispose of the absurdity of “marriages” between a human and an individual of another species or an adult and a child.  Child molestation or rape will not be made legal, and again, would anyone not predisposed to doing so already choose to “marry” a pet or a farm animal?

So much for marriage.  What will be left for the government?  The law makes legitimate all manner of contracts.   Let the law officiate domestic partnerships.  (The term, “civil union,” is insipid.)   Put another way, and I like this term better:  households.  People who agree to live together for an extended period of time–roommates, spouses, relatives, homeowners and servants–form a household, or dare I write it, a family.  There is a simplicity and a stability in defining a group of individuals living together as a household for purposes of social services, income, taxes, and expenses.

This legal household will not imply or require a marriage.  It does not ask the government to inspect any bedroom activity.   It could be used to encourage a sense of responsibility to those with whom we live.  It could explicitly include children in the definition of a household, since there is no sexual component necessary in the term.

In this proposal, households will be an institution defined by government and marriage one defined by religion.  It even draws on the traditional concept of a family.  Call it looking back to look forward.