The Freedom Bulletin

After the Obama love-fest that overtook much of the Internet and the general public this past week after he announced his support for gay marriage, I figured I would be remiss if I did not at least give it a mention on the Freedom Bulletin.

Obama’s endorsement wasn’t exactly surprising, especially after Vice President Biden kind of spilled the beans by saying he was “comfortable” with the idea of gay marriage.

And, despite all the gushing about how courageous Obama is, in my opinion, it wasn’t any more courageous of him to support gay marriage than not to support it. Yes, Obama took a political risk, but he would also have been taking a risk by sticking to his previous position of only supporting civil unions. Most of Obama’s base supports gay marriage, and he decided to gamble that energizing his base would outweigh any objections from his religious supporters and more conservative Democrats. If you look at the myriad polls that have been done, it seems like the American people are, overall, divided pretty evenly on gay marriage, so it’s not as if Obama went out on a limb and took an unpopular position for the principle of it.

Unlike what many newspaper columnists, activists, and online commentators seem to think, gay marriage does not equal “marriage equality” or “equal rights.” As long as our society treats it as better to be in a couple relationship than to be single, there will not be true equality. As I explained before, the government should get out of the business of marriage altogether and allow people and religious institutions to categorize relationships as they see fit. The only way to truly have equality and justice is for the law to treat people equally, regardless of their romantic relationship status. For a politician to stand up for single people, now that would be courageous.

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, have both been in the news recently – DOMA because the Obama administration announced on Thursday that they would no longer defend it against lawsuits, and the ACA because a judge upheld its constitutionality against a religious-freedom-based challenge a week ago. Other than that, these two laws don’t have much in common. But this made me think, why did the Obama administration decide DOMA was unconstitutional while enthusiastically defending the constitutionality of the ACA?

DOMA defines marriage as between one man and one woman and, as a result, denies same-sex spouses of federal employees some benefits that are given to opposite-spouses. The Obama administration decided it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment. As Attorney General Eric Holder wrote, “The record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus that the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.”

The Democrats’ health reform law, the ACA,  makes it illegal (for the vast majority of people) not to buy health insurance, and punishes people who disobey this requirement with fines. The Justice Department’s website has a prominent page dedicated to its “vigorous” defense of the law in federal courts.

Why does the Obama administration believe Obamacare is constitutional but DOMA is not? DOMA merely stops some people from partaking in a benefit offered through their spouse’s employment with the federal government. It might be fairer if both same-sex and opposite-sex couples  were offered the same benefits, but (a) the fairest thing for gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, married, and unmarried people would be not to offer benefits to spouses at all but only to actual employees; and (b) people don’t have a fundamental right to government-given health benefits based on their spouse’s employment. The ACA, on the other hand, outlaws the decision to opt away from health insurance and instead pay for all of one’s health services oneself. In other words, it takes away the ability to spend one’s own money as one chooses, which is a fundamental right.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to allow people to form whatever romantic relationships they want (or none at all) without government labels or interference, and to choose whether to buy insurance or pay for health services in cash? I sure think so, but I guess that’s just me.

The recent court decisions about S.B. 1070, Arizona’s immigration law, and Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning gay marriage in California, have something in common. They both involve people calling certain laws unconstitutional.

Last Wednesday, Federal Judge Susan Bolton ordered an injunction against some parts of Arizona’s immigration law in response to a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, which claims the law is unconstitutional because the federal government, not the states, should have the power to regulate immigration. This Wednesday, Federal Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Proposition 8, calling it unconstitutional.

I have a question for judges, lawyers, the Department of Justice, and America as a whole: if you’re going to be calling laws unconstitutional, aren’t there better laws to call unconstitutional than these?

I am opposed to one part of the Arizona law – the part that makes illegal “the failure to apply for or carry alien registration papers.” Simply existing, legally, in this country but without registration papers does not hurt anyone or violate anyone’s rights. But the rest of the law isn’t bad. Illegal immigration is a serious problem, and I applaud Arizona’s attempt to deal with it.

I don’t think that Proposition 8 violates anyone’s rights at all, because I don’t think that marriage is a right, per se. If the government cared about equality, they would stop granting government recognition to marriages entirely and leave this to individuals and private organizations. Rewarding people for committing to a relationship, whether gay or straight, sends the unfair, false message that couples are superior to single people.

Now for some laws that are really unconstitutional and severely violate people’s rights:

• The Durham-Humphrey Amendment: Nowhere in the Constitution is the government given the power to ban people from taking medications without a doctor’s permission. Has this law ever been challenged in court? Not to my knowledge.
• The TSA’s use of full-body scanners as a primary method of airport security screening: To perform highly invasive searches on millions of people who aren’t even suspected of any crimes blatantly violates the Fourth Amendment.
• The individual health insurance mandate: The power to regulate interstate commerce does not mean the power to force people to engage in commerce.

I understand that obviously, the particular judges who made the rulings in Arizona and California have never, to my knowledge, had the opportunity to address these other laws…so the individual judges are not being hypocritical. But it says something about America as a whole that the government calls two mostly good laws unconstitutional while at least three horribly anti-liberty laws are currently considered perfectly constitutional. Hopefully liberty’s brave friends at EPIC and in Virginia will change this.

Further reading:

Court Order about Arizona law (PDF)

Photo credits: Prop 8 rally by 1FlatWorld (CC ASA 2.0); immigration law protest by Fibonacci Blue (CC ASA 2.0)

Yay! Alison Lobron in the Boston Globe wrote exactly what I’ve been saying! Rewarding married people with health insurance and other benefits from their spouses’ jobs is discriminatory to single people:

“Our country’s habit of passing out financial perks based on marital status is hardly a time-honored tradition. According to marriage historian Stephanie Coontz, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that US governments and corporations began using marital status as a way to decide who got which benefits. ‘The development of the welfare state here was more attached to marriage than to individual rights,’ she says.

Extending the privileges of one spouse to the other might have made sense back when women were often required to leave the workforce upon marriage. But now it’s hopelessly dated. ‘Why should my access to health care depend on whom I’m sleeping with?’ Coontz says. ‘It’s a good reason to argue for the state to develop other ways to extend health insurance and benefits.’”

Proponents of gay marriage should heed this, since they often argue that allowing gays to marry is the only way to have equality. Actually, they just want to join with married straight people to discriminate against singles. True equality will only happen when married people no longer get benefits that single people don’t get. The best way to do that is for the government to get out of the marriage business altogether.

There’s hope for America!

Virginia, New Jersey elect Republican governors

Edit: And… Maine rejects same-sex marriage law

This post is a little late – you have probably heard by now how Miss California Carrie Prejean said in the interview part of the Miss America pageant that she opposed gay marriage, resulting in insults and attacks from Perez Hilton and other pro-gay-marriage people. This whole uproar just goes to show that many liberals seem to be completely intolerant of anyone whose views differ from theirs. I find this hypocritical, since liberals expect everyone not only to be tolerant of people of all sexual orientations, but to give them marriage licenses, and not only to tolerate illegal immigrants, but to give them amnesty, et cetera, et cetera. Liberals demand toleration for basically everything except minority opinions, or any opinions or choices that differ from theirs.

When someone voices an unpopular opinion, what do liberals do? Perez Hilton, who was judging the pageant, not only said in a video that Miss California was a “stupid (b-word)” but also said on MSNBC that “I was thinking the c-word and I didn’t say it.” But wait! It gets worse! E! News anchor Giuliana Rancic said that Prejean was ”an ignorant disgrace and she makes me sick to my stomach.” And these are just two of the numerous Hollywood liberals who bashed Prejean for expressing her views.

Nice! So when someone very politely voices what should be a very uncontroversial opinion, she gets called obscene words! All that Carrie Prejean said was “I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.” How could someone find such a mild, respectfully-phrased statement offensive, let alone swear at and belittle the person who said it?

It seems like Perez Hilton and his liberal Hollywood cohorts are far more intolerant than even the most radical gay-marriage opponents.

How tolerant and accepting liberals are. Not! 

They just took over the presidency, the Senate, and the House, and now they’re throwing fits because Obama picked one slightly conservative person to speak for a few seconds at his inauguration. Obama’s choice of pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration was a gesture of inclusion and a way of saying that Obama actually values conservatives. Now, liberals are saying Obama’s choice was bigoted because Warren opposes gay marriage. Apparently, being inclusive means doing whatever it takes to avoid anything that might even remotely be considered offensive to gays and lesbians, even if it means completely excluding all conservatives. Well, I think that conservatives are just as important as gays and lesbians. I approve of Obama’s decision to bring some actual diversity to his inauguration by choosing someone conservative. A group of people who all think identically and believe the exact same things isn’t very diverse.

On another note, Merry Christmas!