The Freedom Bulletin

Newt and Callista Gingrich, by Gage Skidmore

At tonight’s Republican debate in Iowa, all the candidates were asked at one point about their views on marital fidelity and whether it should be a factor in voters’ decisions. This comes shortly after Mitt Romney released an ad touting his 42-year marriage, children, lifelong Mormon faith, and work experience as evidence of his “steadiness and constancy.” New frontrunner Newt Gingrich has been married three times and started an affair with his current wife, Callista, before divorcing his second wife.

All six candidates answered more or less that yes, a candidate’s character does matter, and marital fidelity is an important part of character. That included Gingrich, who agreed with these sentiments, saying, “I’ve made mistakes … I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness.”

The best answer was Ron Paul’s. “If our marriage vows are important,” he asked, “What about our oath of office?” He then proceeded to change the subject to how politicians need to respect the Constitution, which I agree is a much more important topic than the candidates’ personal lives!

But to the extent that candidates’ personal lives should be a topic of discussion, I don’t think that Newt’s is a reason not to vote for him. Gingrich was married to someone whom, apparently, he was no longer in love with, so he decided to leave her and marry the woman he was in love with. Staying married to the same person is perfectly fine if that’s what makes you happy. So is staying single for your entire life, for that matter. All that Gingrich did was left a situation that wasn’t right for him and did what he felt was right for him and would make him happy. Although Newt may not have handled everything perfectly, doing what is right for you, especially when you know people will disapprove, takes courage, and that is not something to look down on.

Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill reforming Massachusetts’s alimony laws yesterday. The bill, overall, will decrease the amount of alimony people have to pay to their ex-spouses, limiting payments to a set amount of time based on the length of the marriage.

This bill, while it doesn’t go as far as I would, is a step in the right direction. I don’t think there should be such thing as alimony or spousal support at all. The way I see it, no adult has a right to be financially supported by another adult, and there is no reason why one person should be required to continue financially supporting another just because they have in the past. If one person agrees to financially support another, fine, but this is a favor, not a right, and the giver has a right to withdraw it at any time.

I’ve heard many supporters of alimony argue that stay-at-home spouses contribute just as much to the marriage as those who have jobs, and that they are making a big sacrifice by giving up their careers to take care of the house and/or children. Yes, housework does require some time and effort. But in my experience as a single person who both takes care of my house and has a full-time job, commuting to my job and spending the day in an office is way more tiring and time consuming than doing the cleaning, cooking, shopping, and laundry that I need to do. If I could choose between working full-time and not having to do any chores around the house, or doing all the chores and not having to work, I would definitely choose the second. Each type of work is work to some extent – I’m not trying to say that spouses who stay at home do nothing but sit around all day. But having a job – unless you have an unusually easy job – is simply more time-consuming and stressful than working around the house. For one spouse to be the breadwinner and the other to stay at home is just not an equal division of labor.

And yes, staying home for a long time is an impediment if you decide to go back into the job market at a later date. But it’s not exactly a sacrifice to receive the material goods you need for free, instead of having to work for them. Plus, unless someone forced you to stay at home, you don’t have a right to demand restitution for this because it was your own choice.

For one spouse to be allowed to live off the money of another is a windfall that they did nothing to earn. Even if someone freely chooses to do such a favor – and many people are pressured into it against their will – they should also be free to change their mind and stop the financial support at any time. Alimony punishes people for doing a favor for their spouse, and rewards people for having received financial support that they did not earn. If anything, the spouse who received the financial support should have to pay alimony as a way of repaying the favor that they received!

So while eliminating lifetime alimony is a good start, I hope alimony laws are changed even more in the direction of equality and justice.

Presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum both signed a pledge created by an organization called the Family Leader, called “The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence upon Marriage and Family” (PDF). The pledge is controversial because it is anti-gay-marriage and cites (possibly false) statistics showing that African-Americans born into slavery had a greater chance of living in a two-parent family than African-Americans born today. But the main impression that I get after reading the pledge, which I find more offensive and wrong, is its disrespect for single people. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, to their credit, declined to sign.

Among the requirements of the pledge:

“Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.”

Maybe there are statistics indicating these things, but this doesn’t have anything to do with the president’s job. Laws should not be made based on statistics but should treat people as individuals.

“Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended ‘second chance’ or ‘cooling off periods for those seeking a ‘quickie divorce.’”

Welfare and tax policy should treat married and single people equally, and if someone decides that marriage is not right for them, there is no reason why they should be forced to stay in that marriage for any length of time.

“Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy – our next generation of American children – from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.”

This statement lumps a bunch of different things together and seems to assume that they are all things that men coerce women and children into doing. In addition to ignoring the fact that people can freely choose to do (most of) these things, this is incredibly sexist. It’s just as possible for women to force men to do things as the other way around.

“Prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.”

I’m guessing this statement means opposing allowing women to serve in combat. This is wrong, in my opinion, because the law (and the rules of the military) should treat men and women equally in all respects. Also, men can be victims of rape, sexual harassment, torture, enslavement, and sexual leveraging, too.

“Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.”

This might sound harsh, but more childbearing is the last thing America (and the world) needs. The Earth’s population already uses far more energy than is sustainable, and open spaces are rapidly filling up with condominiums and suburban sprawl. In order to save the planet, the population needs to shrink.

In short, the purpose of the government is to protect peoples’ rights and liberties, not to promote one way of living (getting married and having children) over another way of living (being single). I don’t know if I would want to vote for a candidate who signed this pledge.

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.

Since Proposition 8 was passed, outlawing gay marriage in California, liberals have been complaining almost nonstop that gay people’s rights are being violated. First of all, this irks me because the liberals creamed conservatives on election day, taking control of the presidency and Congress and killing Question 1 in Massachusetts. You’d think this would be enough to make them happy. But you’d be wrong.

Gay marriage supporters like to compare their struggle with African Americans’ struggle for civil rights. This is a completely inaccurate analogy. At various times in our history, blacks were subjected to slavery, were unable to vote, were lynched, and their property was vandalized.  All people have a fundamental right to vote, own property, make their own decisions, and of course own themselves, so the treatment of blacks described above violated their rights.

On the other hand, gay rights activists are arguing that their rights are being violated because they cannot get married. This isn’t true, because marriage is not a right. Gay people, just like everyone else, have the rights to own property, own themselves, make choices, and live without interference, but they don’t have a right to marriage.

By arguing that they have a fundamental right to marriage, gay people are themselves being discriminatory, because marriage is an inherently discriminatory institution. It discriminates against people who choose not to get married. Basically, marriage is when the government gives people benefits (such as tax breaks) for deciding to form a lifelong partnership with another person. By giving benefits to married people that it does not give to single people, the government sends the message that married people are superior to single people. This is simply wrong. There are many reasons why individuals would rahter be single than married: maybe they are asexual, maybe they would like to live alone and be in control of their own house, maybe they would rather date lots of different people instead of committing to one. Whatever the reason, single people are just as good as married people, and being single is just as desirable a state as being married.

When people claim that gays have a right to marry people of the same gender, they are actually saying that gays have a right to be treated in a way that discriminates against single people. It makes sense to argue that gay people have a right to form any consensual relationship they want. It does not make sense to argue that gay people have a right to form a lifelong partnership with someone of the same gender and get government benefits for it.

I am not being anti-gay, since I don’t think straight people have a right to marriage either. Instead, the government shouldn’t be in the business of granting recognition to relationships in the first place. People should be able to form whatever relationships they want and call them whatever they want to.

Owning property, making one’s own decisions about medicine, and bearing arms are all examples of fundamental rights. These rights are currently being violated due to the 16th Amendment, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment to the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Brady Bill, respectively, acts which, interestingly enough, are predominantly supported by liberals. It’s awfully hypocritical to oppose the rights to own property, make decisions autonomously, and bear arms, while claiming that there is a fundamental right to marriage.

A district court in Iowa ruled today that gay marriage is legal under the state’s constitution. This ruling overturns a state law limiting marriage to unions between one man and one woman. The case, which involved six same-sex couples who want to marry, will advance to the Iowa Supreme Court. As an opponent of gay marriage, I hope the Supreme Court decides to keep marriage laws in the state the way they are.

This is a sad day for the people’s right to vote in Massachusetts. The state legislature has just defeated a measure that would place a question on the ballot in the 2008 elections allowing people to vote on the definition of marriage. All the legislators who voted for the amendment: I congratulate you for your courage to defy peer pressure. Governor Patrick, Speaker DiMasi, and Senate President Murray, shame on you for browbeating your fellow legislators into changing their votes. The marriage amendment was victorious in the first round of voting earlier this year, but this time it fell short of the 50 votes it required to get on the ballot. Clearly, quite a few legislators changed their minds, and VoteOnMarriage.org vows to investigate these changes of opinion for corruption. I hope they find some!